Odyssey

by Jack McDevitt

  And once again, it would be left to Eric to ladle on the praise.

  VEGA IS LOCATED in the Lyra constellation, twenty-five light-years from Earth. It’s a main sequence blue-white dwarf star, roughly three times Sol’s diameter, and almost sixty times as luminous. It’s much younger, only 350 million years old. But because of its size, and the rate at which it’s burning hydrogen, it will exhaust its supply in another 650 million years.

  It has a pair of Jovians in distant orbits, both more remote than Pluto. There are several terrestrial worlds, including one in the biozone, which is seven times farther out than Sol’s, but it harbors no life.

  Vega was a popular stop on the Blue Tour because of the presence of Romulus and Remus, a pair of terrestrials of almost identical dimensions, both with atmospheres, locked in a tight gravitational embrace. Technically, they, too, were in the biozone, but they barely qualified, out on the farther edge, where the winter never really went away.

  Also lifeless, they were nevertheless beautiful worlds, only 160,000 kilometers apart, half the distance between Earth and the moon. Both had oceans and continents. Snow covered most of the land; the oceans were a concoction of ice and water, prevented by tidal action from freezing completely. The system had an ethereal, crystal quality, like a cosmic Christmas ornament.

  The tour ships, in their souvenir shops, carried graphic displays, vids, and models of the system. It easily outsold everything else on the shelves.

  Valya waited until she was close enough to get the full effect before putting the twin worlds on the displays. They were a compelling sight. Predictably, Amy squealed with delight, and MacAllister admitted she had a point.

  “You know,” Eric said, “having Amy along has really added something to the trip.”

  MacAllister smiled wearily. “Indeed it has.”

  THEY WENT INTO orbit around Romulus. “The planets in this system,” Valya said, “are quite young. Like their sun. They’re still undergoing the formation process.”

  “What does that actually entail?” asked MacAllister.

  “Mostly, they get plunked by a lot of debris, Mac. There are no giants close in to clear out the rocks and pebbles, so it’ll go on for a long time.”

  MacAllister saw one or two streaks in the atmosphere below.

  “Anybody want to go down and look?” she asked.

  That brought another burst of enthusiasm from Amy. Eric said yes, of course he would go.

  “How about you, Mac?”

  “You say there’s nothing alive down there?”

  “Nope. Nothing at all. Not so much as a microbe.”

  He wondered about earthquakes and volcanoes. The worlds were so close to each other, he suspected there were all kinds of disruptions. He was more cautious since his experience at Maleiva III. But he couldn’t back off again. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Why not?”

  Valya reviewed e-suit procedures, and they all put on the harnesses. They did a checkout routine, went below, and climbed into the lander.

  Minutes later the launch doors rolled back and they looked out at the night sky. It was studded with stars and dominated by the two planets, both half in daylight. “You want to say the word, Mac?” she asked.

  Amy nodded encouragement.

  “I doubt I’m a very reliable pilot, Valya.”

  “Bill will take care of the heavy lifting. Just tell him to go.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Take us to the surface, Bill.”

  “As you wish, Mac,” said the AI.

  The vehicle lifted off and drifted gently through the doors. A million stars looked down on them. The center of the Milky Way lay off to their left, and the silver and blue planets floated, one below, one overhead. It was, for MacAllister, a good moment. He was glad he’d come.

  THE LANDER SLIPPED into lower orbit and Remus dropped below the horizon. They crossed the terminator onto the night side, kept going for a long time, and finally eased into the atmosphere. Bill took them down through scattered clouds. The ground was dark. Mac couldn’t even tell whether they were over land until Valya switched on a display that relayed sensor images. Probably infrared. It was ocean, with scattered islands, and a storm to the south.

  Valya took control from Bill and set down on one of the islands. She handed out oxygen tanks, and they ran another drill. How to breathe, for God’s sake. And be careful: Gravity is only 0.8.

  MacAllister was seated in the rear, with Eric. He looked out across a stretch of sand. The surf was high, and the ocean moved gently beneath the starlight. The interior of the island was composed mostly of frozen mud. There were a few scattered hills.

  “Okay,” Valya said, “activate the suit.”

  MacAllister punched the big blue button on his belt and the Flickinger field formed around him. Air began to flow.

  “Everybody okay?” Her voice was coming in over the commlink now.

  They all checked in. Valya turned on a couple of the navigation lights so they’d be able to see. “Mac,” she said, “tell Bill to decompress the cabin.”

  Feeling silly, but not wanting to make a fuss, he complied. “Bill,” he said, sounding as bored as he could, “decompress.”

  He heard the hiss of air. Then the hatch opened and, with Amy in the lead, they climbed out and stood on the sand. It was hard as rock.

  There was always something surreal in people wearing casual clothes standing around on the frozen surface of another world. He had gray slacks and a blue-and-gold Mariners hockey shirt with number seventeen and the name LEVINS on the back. The shirt had been a Christmas present from a cousin, intended as a joke because of his public stance that hockey was a game for idiots. Levins apparently played for the Mariners, who were one of the Canadian teams. He wasn’t sure which one. But it was comfortable and seemed to fit the mood of the evening’s jaunt.

  Valya was in a Salvator jumpsuit. Eric wore workout clothes, with a top that read PROXMIRE ACCOUNTING. It was Amy who set the trend. She had a blue pullover, blue shorts, and loafers. The wind howled around her, and the temperature must have been thirty below. MacAllister felt cold just looking at her.

  He increased the heat in his suit and wondered how long it would take to freeze if the electronics went down. The e-suits themselves were not visible, save for a brief shimmer around the wearer when the light hit them just right.

  They started toward the water. The waves, probably energized by the mass and proximity of Remus, came pounding in. It was, in a bleak way, an extraordinarily beautiful place. This was his first visit to a sterile world. It was unsettling to look out at the ocean, which could have been the Atlantic, and know there was no shell along any of its beaches, no seaweed, not so much as a living cell anywhere.

  The frozen sand crunched beneath his feet. They walked out into the surf, and MacAllister felt it break against his shins and try to suck him out. It was a pleasant sensation.

  Valya pointed to a glow on the horizon, out over the water. “We timed it pretty well,” she said.

  Eric went out until the waves were breaking past his hips. Remus was rising.

  They stood for several minutes, talking about nothing in particular, watching the golden arc push out of the sea. It was magnificent.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” said Amy.

  This was no small, barren moon rising above the ocean. It was a brilliant shimmering yellow world, with oceans and continents and rivers, surrounded by the soft haze of an atmosphere. “It looks different than it did from the ship,” Eric said.

  Valya pushed out and stood beside him. “It’s all expectations. You’re on the ground, like back home, and you expect to see a moon. Instead, you get that.”

  “You know,” said Amy, “my father thinks he’s seen this. He’s watched the sims. But you really have to be here.”

  Eric nodded. The light caught his protective field, and it shimmered, providing a spectral effect. “Maybe,” he said, “you could bring him here eventually.”

  “No. He wouldn�
�t want to get this far from Washington.” She shook her head. “I wonder how life on Earth might have been different if we’d had a moon like that, and if it had had cities that we could see.”

  MacAllister made a mental note to keep an eye on the kid. If she didn’t become a pilot, he’d offer her a job with The National. Maybe—

  “Look!” Eric was pointing in the opposite direction, back across the hills. A streak of light raced down the sky.

  “More moonriders,” said Amy.

  Valya put a hand on her shoulder as the object exploded into a shower of sparks. “I don’t think so, hryso mou. It’s just a meteor. They get a lot of them here.”

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  Government sources revealed today that an Academy ship experienced an encounter with a moonrider in the Ophiuchi system, about twenty light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, at a velocity of approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. The moonrider is reported to have diverted an asteroid onto a course that would bring it down on Terranova, the first living world found outside the solar system.* The intersection, however, is not expected to happen for almost two decades. Scientists close to the Academy say that a similar event on Earth would probably end civilization and would, in any case, cause mass extinctions. No one seems able to offer an explanation why the aliens would want to do this. Jasmine Allen, a prominent physicist attached to the Air and Space Museum, says that it sounds to her like pure vindictiveness. “If these things are really there,” she said, “and they actually did this, then I’d say we’ll want to stay as far from them as we can.”

  —The Black Cat Network, Saturday, April 11

  ARNSWORTH: BEEMER HAS REASON TO FEAR HELL

  Announces Prayer Crusade on Assailant’s Behalf Pullman Helps Kick Off “Reclamation Effort”

  chapter 24

  Why is it that people want so desperately to shake hands with otherworldly beings? That people will even insist they have seen visitors from Spica hovering above their backyards? In other times it was ghosts and fairies and goblins, and voices in the night. Is the company of our own species so dull that we need to invent the Other? On the other hand, maybe that explains it.

  —Gregory MacAllister, “The Galactic Coffee Shop”

  The National consisted primarily of political and social commentary. It also carried book reviews, an occasional piece of short fiction, a science column, a column by a professional skeptic, and a few cartoons. At the present time, it was home to a family of correspondents, and a substantial number of periodic contributors. It bore the imprint of its editor. It didn’t trust government, didn’t trust people in authority generally, and carried as its maxim Ben Franklin’s warning: “…we have given you a republic—if you can keep it.”

  The National’s causes were all over the place. It favored a health-care system for everybody on the planet. It championed efforts to strengthen the World Council. It wanted programs to see that nobody went hungry and everybody had a place to sleep. It also favored balanced budgets, reduction in the size of government, and the return of the death penalty. People across the political landscape insisted that there was no way to do all those things. MacAllister proudly responded that, once you make that decision, you’re necessarily right.

  They did not come close to having the widest circulation in the field, but they liked to feel—and loudly proclaimed—that the people who made things happen, or those who might have but stalled around until the dam broke, all read The National. By and large they found a lot in it not to like. MacAllister and his legion routinely called into question the integrity of politicians, the good sense of academics, the single-mindedness of the religious establishment, and the taste of the general public.

  Because The National limited itself to commentary, it wasn’t concerned with day-to-day topicality. Wolfie Esterhaus got the news about the moonriders at Ophiuchi from Mac bare minutes before it broke for the rest of the world. But he had an eyewitness account that had arrived just in time to plug into the upcoming issue. He’d want more than what the boss could give him. The real issue, aside from the nature of the moonriders themselves, was the reaction at high levels.

  The question surfaced at several press conferences in the Americas and around the world. But everybody was brushing the story off. It sounded too much like previous sensationalist reports. Moonriders kidnap two people on remote Manitoba highway. Moonriders buzz private aircraft. Moonrider crashes into ocean.

  Wolfie had a source at the White House. Roger Schubert was deputy assistant to the nation’s security advisor. It took two hours to get through.

  “Wolfie, I was wondering when I’d hear from you.” Followed by a hearty laugh. Schubert was a little guy, with narrow shoulders and a pinched, nervous expression. But he sounded big. He had the voice of a professional wrestler. “You want to know about the moonriders?”

  “Please. Do you guys have anything that hasn’t been made public?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “How is the president reacting?”

  “The same way the rest of us are, Wolfie. He’s waiting for details. Right now it doesn’t sound like much.”

  “You don’t think the asteroid thing sounds crazy?”

  “That’s the whole point: It’s too crazy to believe. Let’s wait and see what the facts are. I’ll tell you this much: If there really are aliens out there, and if they’ve decided to drop a rock on a bunch of whales, or whatever they’ve got on Terranova, they’re going to have to deal with the Humane Society. And no, of course the president won’t like it. He’d probably condemn it. But that sort of thing is a long way from constituting a threat.”

  Schubert was sitting on his desk, arms folded. “Look, Wolfie, I know it sounds spooky. But we don’t even know yet how accurate the projection is. Seventeen years is a long time. Maybe the numbers are wrong. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe they were just practicing landing procedures. But I can tell you this: If moonriders land on the White House lawn, the president will be ready to welcome them.”

  WOLFIE WAS AN ideal number two for MacAllister. He bought into his boss’s philosophy, but was diplomatic and soft-spoken. Everybody liked him, and they saw him as a mollifying influence at The National, a voice of reason and restraint. Many questioned his motives in working for MacAllister, but they were glad for his presence on the editorial page. God knew what the magazine would have been like if it weren’t for him.

  In fact Wolfie admired his editor. MacAllister wasn’t always right, but he was smart enough to know that. He was willing to change his mind when the evidence pointed in a different direction. That fact alone put MacAllister very nearly in a class by himself.

  Wolfie had started life as a Coast Guard officer. He’d served eight years, had participated in any number of rescues of people not smart enough to stay out of the way of storms. A reporter from The Baltimore Sun had done a feature story on him. The story had been expanded into a book, on which Wolfie assisted. He discovered a talent for writing, did a series of stories on Coast Guard operations, and finally moved full-time into journalism, first with the Sun, and later with The Washington Post and DC After Dark, for which he still did occasional assignments.

  But his heart and soul lay with The National. It was the publication the decision-makers read, and feared. You didn’t want to get caught in MacAllister’s sights.

  Wolfie had just started blocking out the next issue when another transmission from the Salvator came in. The boss was in short sleeves, and he looked irritated. He had a few more details about the Ophiuchi sighting. A monitor had shut down at one point and had to be repaired. The Salvator had been ordered away from Ophiuchi. The original briefing provided by the Academy had left the impression the Salvator had simply moved on after inspecting the asteroid. But obviously the high-level folks at the Academy were taking things seriously.

  He added something else: “Wolfie, we landed on the asteroid. It’s a mountain. I can’t imagine how anything as small as t
hat moonrider looked could have moved that thing. If it did, their technology is way ahead of ours. Think about that, then consider the fact that they behave like kids who want to pull legs off grasshoppers. I don’t want to start a panic, so don’t quote me, but I’m not comfortable.”

  Later that afternoon, the World Society for the Protection of Animals issued a statement, condemning the diversion of the asteroid by “whoever is responsible,” and demanding that the Academy be directed to intervene.

  Wolfie called the Academy, identified himself, and asked to speak to Priscilla Hutchins. An AI told him, “Sorry, she’s not available.”

  “I’m a friend of Gregory MacAllister,” he said. “I think she’d consent to talk to me.”

  He was directed to wait. Seven or eight minutes later her voice came over the circuit. No picture. “What can I do for you, Mr. Esterhaus?” She sounded detached. Almost annoyed. Better things to do than talk to journalists.

  “Ms. Hutchins, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you’re busy at the moment.”

  “Pretty much. What’s your question?”

  Did he only get one? “How confident are you about the information that came out of Ophiuchi today?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Are there aliens?”

  “Mr. Esterhaus, Wolfgang, your guess is as good as mine. I’m sure the data passed to us by the Salvator is accurate. We haven’t drawn conclusions yet.”

  “Ms. Hutchins, if the data are accurate, it seems clear that the aliens are deranged. Psychopathic. Is any other conclusion even possible?”

  She thought about it. “I think we need to wait a bit before we’ll have a good read on what’s happening.”

  “So the Academy thinks—”

  “Let’s give it a little time, Wolfgang.”

  “All right, may I ask another question?”