Odyssey

by Jack McDevitt

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

  He was an innocent. Despite the reputation that public relations people have for conniving, Eric actually believed everybody played by the rules. She wondered how good he was at his job.

  She retreated to her cabin, closed the door, and took a deep breath. She should have told Hutch the truth when she started talking about sending the Salvator out here.

  Too late now.

  “Okay, Bill,” she said, “let’s see what Her Highness has to say.”

  Hutch appeared in the center of the room. She was propped against the back of her desk. White blouse, blue neckerchief. Hair perfect. Eyes intense. The woman’s expression was enough to deliver the message.

  “I would have preferred to do this here.”

  Her heart quickened.

  “You’ll probably be getting a message from the people at Orion.”

  Anathema to it all. Didn’t the idiot realize she’d done it for her? Hutchins, if we leave the future to people like you, we’ll wind up sitting on the back side of the moon.

  “…haven’t accounted for Amy’s experience. If you can shed light on that, if you know beyond question that’s another hoax, then let’s just forget this pony ride. Turn around and come home.”

  Hutch, at least try to understand.

  “If you don’t…stay on-station at Origins…”

  At the end, Hutch seemed about to say something else, but abruptly she was gone, replaced by the Academy symbol. A scroll and lamp framing the blue Earth of the United World.

  Well, you couldn’t blame the woman. Hutch was what she was. She’d have been willing to sit there and preside over the end of the Academy, and for that matter over the end of mankind’s future in space, and go down bravely with the ship.

  Valentina Kouros, on the other hand, wasn’t one to stand idly by and accept disaster. She understood that Dryden and his corporate friends had used her, but she had used them, too. The space program was on the move again, and if it had taken some katafero, then so be it.

  She wondered whether there’d be criminal charges.

  Whatever happened, she could expect to live the rest of her life on the ground.

  Well, okay. If that was the price she had to pay. “Bill, I have a response to the message. Director’s eyes only.”

  “Ready.”

  “Hutch,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Amy. We’ll proceed as directed to Origins, survey the area, and await relief.” She stared straight ahead, thinking what else to say. “At your pleasure.”

  When the message had been transmitted, she wrote her resignation. Kept it short. Made it effective on her return to Union. And sent it off.

  She returned to the bridge. Eric was sitting comfortably with his legs thrust out in front of him and his hands clasped behind his head. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  THEY WERE STILL several hours away from Origins.

  Eric was a talker, but Valya was in no mood to keep up her end of a conversation about trifles. She suggested they retreat to the common room and watch a vid. He thought that was a good idea—Eric always liked entertainment—so they made themselves comfortable. It was his turn to make the selection and, probably in deference to her, he went with Thermopolae, an historical drama about the celebrated stand of the Spartans. “Do we want to do substitutions?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Whatever you like.”

  Eric became Demetrios, a captain in the small Spartan force. “You look good in a horsehair helmet,” she told him, as he stood surveying the famous pass. He smiled modestly.

  The female lead, now Valya, was an Athenian dancing girl who’d fallen in love with Demetrios. They watched it through to the end, including a ridiculous scene in which the two lovers—she has refused to leave his side—hold off a small army of Persians before finally succumbing.

  While it played out, she decided there was no point hiding the truth from Eric. He was going to find out eventually. So the credits rolled and the vid makers informed them that the sacrifice of the Spartans had bought valuable time and thereby saved western civilization, and she steeled herself for the ordeal.

  When the lights came on, Eric commented that it was a strong show, and how painful it had been to see her killed off at the end. “Eric,” she said, “I have a confession to make.”

  There was no spoiling his mood. He was a man on a mission. Making his life count for something. Maybe not Demetrios. But a spear-carrier. Or maybe just somebody bringing the water. And she was about to tell him it had all been a hoax. “You’ve fallen desperately in love with me,” he said.

  She took his wrist in her hands. “I wish that were it.”

  His voice changed: “What’s wrong?”

  “Eric, I’ve been lying to you. All along.”

  “About what?”

  It went with a rush. The bogus transmission from the Ophiuchi monitor. How the Terranova asteroid had been aimed months ago by a pair of Orion cargo haulers. How the other asteroid, the one at Capella, was also a fabrication. Orion had known about it well in advance, she said, and they’d put the hotel precisely at the impact point. “I didn’t realize they’d play it so close,” she said. “They had the timing for the rescue down, but it was a near thing. If I’d known…”

  He listened, at first merely frowning, but gradually she watched his features darken. Had it been Mac, who often looked irritated, it would not have meant so much. Mac was accustomed to dealing with liars. But Eric, easygoing, amiable Eric, was different. He was not simply angry; he was hurt.

  He struggled to respond. And she wondered what there was for him to say after she’d played them all for idiots. It’s okay, Valya. No hard feelings. I understand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Then just sat there.

  He looked past her. At the bulkhead. At the open hatch to the bridge. At the spot where the Athenian dancing girl and her Spartan captain had stood against the Persians. “Thanks for telling me,” he said.

  He seemed frozen to his seat.

  “If you want, Eric, I’ll let you off at the station. Hutch knows. She’s sending another ship as soon as she can find one. To relieve us. If you don’t mind waiting around, you’d be able to go home with them.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He stared down at her. “I’m not the one you’re going to have to answer to.”

  The air in the room felt warm and close. “I’ve written my resignation. I’ll be lucky if Hutch doesn’t press charges.”

  He got up and started for the passageway. “I wasn’t talking about Hutch,” he said.

  VALYA HAD NEVER seen a moonrider. She’d seen pictures, supposedly taken live, but she knew how easily those could be generated. She simply didn’t believe the moonriders existed. Call it denial. Call it provincialism. To her, it was a question of accepting her instincts. She no more expected to see aliens in superluminals than the eighteenth-century explorers expected to find Pacific island natives in capital ships.

  The current mission—presumably her last—was an exercise in futility, but it had been assigned, so she’d do what was required, as she always had. Almost always. In any case, she was in no hurry to go back.

  They rode through the void in strained silence. Eric had remained only a few minutes in his cabin before apparently thinking better of his reaction. He returned to the common room and tried to behave as if he hadn’t walked off on her. But there was no getting around the abysmal cloud that occupied the middle of the room. “I take it,” he said finally, “there’s no threat. Was Amy bought, too?”

  That scored a direct hit. “I never took a cent,” she said. “I did it because I thought it was something that needed to be done.”

  His features were rigid. “Tell me about Amy.”

  “I don’t know anything about Amy. I wasn’t there. For all I know, it really happe
ned.”

  “Can I believe you now?”

  “I don’t lie,” she said.

  “Of course not.” He picked up his reader and began paging through it, trying to behave as though she wasn’t there.

  “Eric,” she said, “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry you got involved. There was nothing personal in it.”

  “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter much one way or the other.”

  When he pretended to bury himself in his reading, she went up onto the bridge.

  WHEN THE SALVATOR got within range of Origins, she reactivated the sweep. “Look for asteroids,” she told Bill.

  “There will be no asteroids here, Valya,” he said. “It is no small matter to find even a dust particle. This area was chosen for the Origins Project for that very reason.”

  “Do the sweep anyhow, Bill,” she said. “Let me know if you see anything.”

  She felt like a damned fool. Eric never looked up. She walked past him and went below to conduct an inventory of the breathers Hutch had sent along. She counted eight, some with a two-hour air supply, most with four.

  What had Hutch expected her to do with eight units? There were almost two hundred people at Origins.

  She stayed below more than an hour. When she was finished with the inventory, she opened the hatch to the lander and slipped into the pilot’s seat. The cargo bay was dark and quiet. She sat staring at the launch doors. Finally, the tears came, and the emotions she’d been holding back overwhelmed her. My God, she thought, what have I done?

  The launch doors beckoned. She could instruct Bill to take Eric to Origins. She pictured herself adrift in the lander, air running out, waiting for the end. Hutch would shake her head and comment how she’d had it coming.

  She tried to steel herself to do it. Get it over with. It was a way to show that, despite everything they thought about her, she was an honorable woman.

  Mac also probably knew the truth by now. There was a guy who would know how to forgive. She could imagine him looking at her with those belligerent eyes and shaking his head. And walking away from her.

  Never darken my door.

  She was close to doing it. At least she thought she was. She actually closed the hatch and sat trying to find the words to tell Bill to depressurize the launch section.

  But she’d promised she’d check for asteroids.

  What a laugh.

  Was there a chance, any chance at all, that monsters would come out of nowhere on a vector for one of the towers?

  Still, she’d said she would do a sweep.

  She desperately wanted a reason to prolong her life. And it was all she had.

  When you depressurize, you can hear it at first. Hear the air getting sucked out. After a couple of minutes the sound goes away because there’s not enough air to carry it. She wiped her eyes and wished there were a way to make everything right.

  People like to say they’re not afraid of dying. Valya was. The time in daylight is so short, so marvelous. She hated the thought of plunging into the night. Of taking that final deep dive into annihilation.

  It would have been easier if she were leaving behind an admirable record. If she could believe Mac would stand at night and look at the stars and remember that she had been part of his life. If Hutch would regret the loss, even a little, and the Academy, or maybe a small group of friends, would hold a service for her, where someone would cry.

  SHE WAS STILL hours away when she braked, connected with the facility’s approach beam, and made final course adjustments. From this point she would not use her engines.

  The preliminary sweeps, as she knew they would, revealed only empty space in all directions. Eventually the Salvator drew within visual range of the East Tower. Abiding by procedure, she sent an audio-only report to Mission Ops: “We read negative 6.5 million kilometers out. Assuming maximum approach velocity of twenty-five kps, predict no threat can materialize within next three days.”

  The chance of finding a rock coming in faster than that was pretty much nil.

  She could imagine Hutchins sitting in her office, amused at Valya’s being forced to turn her last mission into a wild goose chase.

  AHEAD, THE EAST Tower floated in the dark. It was visible only as a circle of starless space. A transmission was coming in. “Welcome to the Origins Project, East Tower.”

  “Hello, East Tower. Salvator requests clearance to dock.”

  “Very good, Salvator. We’ll bring you in.”

  “Buckle in, Eric,” she said.

  He had made an effort to lighten the mood. Told her he wished her luck and changed the subject. But the atmosphere remained tense, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

  Controlled by the complex of gravity fields. they eased into the dock, and a familiar voice came over the link. “Hi, Valya. I heard you were coming.” It was Lou Cassell. “We didn’t expect to see you back here so soon. Still chasing moonriders, are we?”

  It was nice to hear an unstrained human voice again. Eric had completely lost the ability to talk with her. He sounded by turns sad, apologetic, accusing, deferential. But good old Lou was just the tonic she needed. “Actually, there’s some concern they might be coming here,” she said.

  “That’s what we heard. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything to it, Lou.”

  “I’ll tell you, Val, if they were to show up here and start dropping rocks on us, I’m not sure what we’d be able to do about it.”

  She laughed. “Relax, Lou. We’ve all gone a little bit crazy.”

  Airlocks opened. She climbed out of her harness and walked back to the common room. Eric was back in his cabin, getting his gear.

  Lou came through the hatch, and she told him how glad she was to see him. He looked surprised at the intensity of the embrace he got. His smile brightened the place and made her feel human again. “Good to see you both,” he said. At which point she realized Eric was back. “Anybody else on board? No? Well, come on in and make yourselves comfortable. Are you going to stay over?”

  “For a day or two,” she said. “If you have room for us.”

  They went out the hatch and strolled through the exit tube. “There really is talk about moonriders,” she said.

  “I know.” Lou obviously thought the subject laughable. “Apparently, your people got in touch with Allard, and he let us know. We got a message from a reporter, too. Saying the same thing. Telling us to look out.”

  “MacAllister?”

  “Yeah. That might have been the name.”

  That caused a twinge. “I assume everybody had a good laugh.”

  He shrugged. “Tell you the truth, it shook us up a little. I mean, it sounds crazy, but if the Academy was taking it seriously, we were, too. I mean, that business at Capella was really strange.” He looked at her, then at Eric. “You want to tell me what all this is about? I understand you saw moonriders at the Surveyor site, but I don’t see how that would translate into an attack against us.”

  “We didn’t really see them, Lou,” she said. “The monitor reported some dark objects moving around. That’s all we know.” That had surprised her when it happened. But she suspected there was a natural explanation.

  Eric gave her a nod of approval. Yes, keep Amy out of it. “Anyhow,” he said, “they just wanted us to come by and make sure everything’s okay.”

  This time they got to meet Mahmoud Stein, the East Terminal director. Stein appeared to be well past retirement age. He had black hair and brown eyes that never seemed to come quite into focus. He was smaller than she was, solemn, with perfect diction, enunciating each word as if it were being recorded for posterity. He shook their hands and said how pleased he was to meet them. But he also laughed about the moonriders. “Do you people really think we’re going to get attacked by little green men?”

  “No,” she said. “I think the Academy is just being cautious.”

  Stein had better things to do, and he let her
see it. “It’s just like Allard, though,” he said. “He warns us of something like this and doesn’t bother to send anyone to help if it were to materialize. We have seventy-two people here, with no way to move any of them off in a hurry if we had to. I guess that tells you how seriously he was taking it.”

  Valya shrugged. “You don’t have a ship here anywhere, I guess?”

  “We have two shuttles.”

  “Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. And we have ships on the way. To stand by. Just in case.”

  He shook his head, a man in the employ of morons. Something in the gesture reminded her of Mac. “I suspect it is a waste of resources, young lady. But nevertheless I appreciate your concern. It’s nice to know somebody cares.”

  “I have a question for you, Professor,” said Eric. “Valya says rockets and maneuvering jets aren’t allowed anywhere near the collider.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But you have shuttles.”

  “Two of them at each tower, yes.”

  “How are they powered?”

  “Some of our people would tell you by hot air.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Stein laughed. “They operate within magnetic and gravitational fields projected from stations along the tube. They orient with clutched gyros. It’s quite effective.”

  “Suppose there’s an emergency?”

  “If necessary, they can maneuver by ejecting tennis balls.”

  “Tennis balls.”

  Valya smiled. “The director is pulling your leg, Eric.”

  “Well,” said Stein, “actually they’re trackable missiles. But they look like tennis balls.”

  THEY WERE REINTRODUCED to a few of the people they’d met on the first flight. To Jerry Bonham, a quiet, nervous guy from Seattle. His specialty, Lou explained, was flow dynamics. “He’s been here six months. I think he hopes to make this his home.” And Lisa Kao Ti, an engineer, part of the team seeing to the expansion of the collider.

  “It’s been, what, a month since you were here?” Lisa asked. “We’re about three hundred kilometers longer than we were then.”

  “And this is Felix Eastman,” he said, introducing them to a copper-skinned man in a bright yellow shirt. “From North Dakota. Felix is working on Blueprint.”