Denise Peifer was a specialist in extraterrestrial biology. Denise was gorgeous, with light brown hair, a captivating smile, and penetrating brown eyes. She sat down beside Jake. “Drake asked me to say hello,” she said.
“Drake?” He had to think about it. Oh, Drake Peifer. “You’re his wife?”
“His sister.” Denise was momentarily amused. Then it was on to the serious stuff: “I hope you got everything right, Jake. It sounds as if there’s something really weird going on out there. But I’ll tell you”—she was talking to Samantha now—“if we find something alive on a world that hasn’t had sunlight for millions of years, I will be shocked. In fact—”
“I get your point,” said Samantha. “But you’ve seen the report. And if you have any questions, the guy who wrote it is right here.”
They all looked at him, and Jake avoided their eyes. He didn’t want to be responsible for taking anybody on a long wild-goose chase. If that was the way it turned out. “It was strange,” he said. “But the report is as accurate as we could make it.”
* * *
WITHIN A FEW minutes after clearing the station, Samantha joined him on the bridge. “Jake,” she said, “I was looking at the pictures you got of the landscape.”
“You mean the artwork?”
“Yes. That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “It’s hard to see how those curving hills and domed peaks and the rest of it could have happened naturally.”
“You have any theories?”
“None.”
“Tell me about the rain. Was it falling everywhere across the area?”
“No. It only extended a few meters out from Priscilla and me.”
“Your own private shower?”
“Something like that.”
* * *
PRISCILLA HAD BEEN good company during that long qualification flight. But as amiable and easygoing as she was, Jake knew that having several people on board constituted a vast improvement in social atmosphere. Given a group, you almost always got a conversational flow, and the content was much less predictable. In addition, Tony was an accomplished violinist.
Within an hour after they’d submerged and were on their way to Orfano, they’d gotten into several debates. Samantha thought that some of the more radical physicists might well be right in claiming that the universe was an illusion. Tony, a mathematician with a conservative taste in politics, found himself in a duel with Denise, who had a liberal mind-set. Mary, at one point, asked him to shut up. Tony commented that he was only upset that he was being cut off from the presidential campaign as it was heating up. “I’m just saying the timing for all this could have been better.”
“We could have gotten someone else to come,” Samantha told him.
“No, no,” he said. “Don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t miss this for anything. But the economy’s been losing ground for years. I’ll be surprised if McGruder doesn’t walk away with the election.”
“McGruder doesn’t have a prayer,” said Mary. Once a reporter for The New York Times, she was now a freelance writer, the author of several books on popular science, including the bestseller Clockwork.
Denise looked around at her colleagues. “I wonder if there’s any possibility we could discover something out there that would impact the presidential race.”
And so it went.
* * *
MARY SPENT A lot of time taking notes, and Jake got the impression that, if they were successful, everything they said would show up in an autobiography, or a bestseller.
Denise was so excited by the mission, she had trouble sleeping. She was full of theories about the prospects on Orfano. “It’s possible,” she said, “that the world was home to a hypercivilization when it was ripped out of orbit. If you have enough technology, you can survive pretty much anything. They’d have had to go underground, though.”
Mary was skeptical. “If they were a hyper, couldn’t they have prevented it? Kept their world in orbit?”
“How,” asked Tony, “would an underground civilization have stepped in to prevent the lander from going down?”
“I didn’t say they’d have been limited to being underground. That’s just where they’d live. But for all we know, they’re wandering around out here themselves.”
“If they could do that, wouldn’t they have moved to a sunnier world?” asked Mary. “Someplace warm?”
“Maybe,” said Denise, “some wanted to stay home. Like people who won’t leave town when a hurricane’s coming.” She looked at Jake. “You were there. What do you think?”
Jake had no clue. “It looked to me like nothing but ice and rock. I couldn’t imagine anything living there. Still, we did see lights.”
“None of it makes any sense,” said Tony. “A hypercivilization would have moved the world elsewhere, or encased it, or done something that we’d be able to see.”
“Well,” said Samantha, “there is the artwork.”
“You think that’s really what it is?” asked Tony.
“I’ve talked to a number of specialists. Nobody can account for it as a natural occurrence.”
“Whatever they might be,” said Mary, “they didn’t attack Priscilla and Jake. That suggests they might be pretty advanced.”
Denise smiled. “Maybe they saw no need to attack anybody. Maybe they concluded we’re not very bright and pose no threat.” She realized what she’d said and looked at Jake. “I guess I didn’t phrase that very well, Jake. That’s not quite what I meant.”
He laughed. “It’s all right, Denise. I’ve been called worse.”
Her smile widened. “I guess we can all see who’s the dummy around here. But seriously, there are other possibilities. They’ve had millions of years. At least. They may have been initially underground, but eventually they could have transformed into something else entirely. They may have adapted to the cold. They may have gotten control of the climate. We tend to assume you have to have sunlight and water to have life. That’s not necessarily true.”
“Can you offer any examples, Denise?” asked Samantha.
“We have life-forms in the oceans that have never seen the sun. Though I’ll confess you probably have to have it, along with water, to get started. But life is tenacious. Once it gets rolling, it’s very good at adapting.”
“Maybe,” said Tony, “intelligent life is there, but on a very small scale. So small we wouldn’t be able to see their cities.”
Denise’s eyes sparkled. “Tony, that may be pushing it a bit.”
* * *
THE OFFICIAL PURPOSE of the mission was to recover Otto’s body. That was a relatively prosaic, if requisite, matter, but Samantha explained they didn’t want to get everyone excited about aliens, then look foolish if they came home with no answers. But the actual intention was to determine what precisely had happened to the Vincenti lander. How had it gotten almost intact to the ground? “What we’ll do,” she said, “is just try to get some indication whether the business with the lander could have been, in any way, the result of natural causes. Or whether something else is happening.”
* * *
DENISE WAS A fitness nut. The interstellars all had a workout room, and it was usually cramped and boring. This one was no exception. Priscilla had ignored the one on the Copperhead. Jake was inclined not to bother either when he didn’t have company. So he’d gained a few pounds on that certification flight.
The Venture had a treadmill and a stationary bike. And Denise produced an elastic cord two feet long. “It functions as a bungee.”
“In what way?” asked Jake.
“Come on. I’ll show you.” She demonstrated, using it to stretch arms and legs. Jake tried it.
“The best way to do it,” she said, “is for us to play tug-of-war.”
“In zero gravity?” asked Jake.
“Try it.”
Each took one end of the bungee and grabbed hold of a handrail. Then they began to pull. The cable tightened, and
Jake got surprised when Denise, who wasn’t much more than half his size, yanked him off his feet. He quickly discovered that hanging on to both the cord and the handrail was tricky. It didn’t help that he began to laugh. Finally, he released his hold on the rail and, as he was dragged through the air, lapsed into hysterics.
Odd things happen in zero gee.
Tony and Mary came in to see what the commotion was. “Don’t worry about it, Jake,” Tony said. “She does that to everybody.”
* * *
AT THE BEGINNING of his career, Jake had thought of the pleasures of starflight as being contained in the arrival at whatever far-flung destination, with its alien sunlight and its family of planets, with the vast oceans sometimes found on Goldilocks worlds, with rings and moons and comets, with the potential for other life-forms and always, especially, the possibility of a new civilization. That was what it had been about.
But he’d quickly discovered that there was an interior pleasure to be had as well, derived from sharing the experience with others driven by similar passions. Even to the extent of simply taking advantage of the sense of being together in a place so distant from the rest of humanity. It reminded him of how fortunate he was. And that he had no way to explain any of this to Alicia. He realized that he’d blundered. He should have found a way weeks ago to take her on a flight. When he got home, he’d do it. No way she could decline.
* * *
LIBRARY ENTRY
The more we study art, the less we care for nature. What art really reveals to us is nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished erudition.
—Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, 1889
Chapter 47
THE BLEU-CHEESE SALAD was delicious. Priscilla was wearing a soft, silky blouse to which she’d just treated herself. It was midnight blue and intended as compensation for missing the Orfano flight. Drake Peifer, seated across the table, was frowning at his sandwich.
“Not good?” she asked.
“It’s okay. A bit flat.”
Behind him, through the room-length window, a comet was gliding past, its tail of incandescent gas disappearing behind the curtains near the host’s desk. She could also see moving lights at Moonbase.
Drake was scheduled to leave in an hour on a flight to Quraqua. He saw that she was focused on the window and turned to look. “The view is spectacular enough,” he said. “I don’t think they need the comet.”
She smiled. “Maybe not. But the tourists love it.” It was, of course, a projection. But that didn’t matter. Everyone in the Skyview, forty or fifty people, stared at it with their mouths open. Even the people in the silver-and-blue uniforms.
“But it’s outward-bound, Priscilla.”
“So what?”
“The tail should be in front of it.”
Priscilla tried to remember what she knew about comets. She was more into ship operations and couldn’t recall ever having seen a comet up close. “I thought the tail was always in the rear. Isn’t that why they call it a tail?”
Drake shook his head. “Not really. I mean, if they do this stuff, they should get the science right.”
Priscilla waved it away and went back to her salad. Drake was amiable enough, but he tended to be a perfectionist. Anyone mispronouncing a word in his presence would get a tolerant smile. Some poor woman would pay a price for that one day. “I prefer my tails in the rear,” she said. But he was looking over her shoulder now, not paying attention. “What’s going on back there, Drake?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said, “I was just watching the kids.” There were about a dozen of them who’d left their tables and were lined up along the window, pointing and laughing at the comet. “An experience like that, for a child, is probably a life-changer. The world will never look the same.” Frank was also back there, sitting alone at a table, engrossed in his notebook. And a thin guy with blond hair who looked lost. Priscilla sipped her tea. “It’s too bad we can’t get everybody on the planet up here for a couple of hours. Maybe there’d be a lot less parochialism.”
Drake shrugged. “Ah, you think it would give us world peace. Good luck on that one. It’s what they said after the first photos of Earth were taken from space.” The bill arrived. Priscilla reached for it, but he waved her off. “I’ve got it,” he said. “Can’t allow a beautiful woman to buy her own salad.”
* * *
THEY CAME OUT of the restaurant into the concourse. Music, laughter, and the sounds of lasers in a gaming room. Priscilla accompanied Drake as far as the connecting tube, which would take him down to the boarding platform. He was about to start down when the public address system activated: “Everyone please stay in your quarters until otherwise notified. There is no reason for alarm. But in the interests of caution—”
“No reason for alarm,” said Priscilla. She couldn’t think of a better way to induce panic.
The message kept running. “. . . keep everyone informed as the situation develops . . .”
A burst of noise erupted behind them, frightened shouts, raised voices, people all talking at once, one child in tears. “I think the commotion’s coming from the Skyview,” said Drake.
Priscilla stopped one of the women. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The woman was so rattled she could barely speak. She looked at Priscilla with bleak eyes. “A bomb,” she said. “There’s a guy in there with a bomb.”
The Skyview also had long windows that fronted on the concourse. She and Drake hurried back to look. Most people in the restaurant were out of their chairs, backing up against the bulkheads. All were focused on the blond young man who’d looked lost minutes ago. He was about twenty-five, wearing gray slacks and a white pullover. Average size, with blue eyes. There was something in his hand. He was speaking but she couldn’t hear anything through the Plexiglas. The diners had gotten as far from him as they could.
Other than Frank, who hadn’t moved except to activate his link so security would be able to overhear everything.
Priscilla called her office. The AI responded. “Yes,” she said. “There is a threat at the Skyview. The subject is talking with Security now. We’re getting it here. Do you want the feed?”
“Please.”
“—calm. If any of you get in the way, everybody’s going to be dead.” He lifted his right hand, the one that held the device. It looked like a phone. The voice was cold and angry, and loud enough that everyone in the restaurant could undoubtedly hear whatever he decided to say. They were in tears, begging the bomber not to hurt the children, asking what they’d ever done to him. They were holding up hands, standing in front of children, hoping to shield them.
“All right, sir.” One of the security people on the link. His voice would have been coming into the restaurant through loudspeakers. “Don’t get upset. We don’t want anyone getting hurt here. What is it that you need?”
“Just so you know,” said the blond man, “it’s a dead man’s switch.” He waved the thing that looked like a phone. “If I let go of it, it’ll go off.”
That caused a fresh wave of hysteria in the Skyview, more screams, kids bursting into tears, people falling down. A couple of them got out the door.
“Hey,” he said, “you guys told me you’d locked the doors. Do it now. Anybody else goes out, I’m blowing this thing. Now do it.”
“Sorry,” said the other voice. “We couldn’t locate the code. We’ve got it now.”
“You’re funny,” said the bomber.
“My name’s Abel, sir. We’re trying to do everything you ask.”
“Yeah. Try to be a little quicker about it. And keep the security guys outside.”
And, finally, Frank got to his feet. “What’s your name, sir?” he asked.
“What’s it matter? Who are you?”
“My name’s Frank. I work here. And I’ll help you if I can. We just don’t want anybody getting hurt.”
The blond man stared at him. “I’m James A
ddison.”
“Is it okay if I call you James?”
“Maybe you better get over near the wall, Frank. With the rest of these people.”
Someone yelled, “Get over here!”
Frank smiled. “James, would it be all right with you if we let these people leave? I’ll stay with you, and we can talk this—”
“No! Nobody goes anywhere.”
“All right. What can we do for you? What do you need?”
James was waving the device. “Just back off, okay?”
“We’re doing that. No problem. What else?”
James began talking into his link again. But Priscilla wasn’t getting the transmission. “He switched channels,” said the AI. “Security says he’s talking to somebody off station.”
One of the women, with a child in tow, was edging toward the door.
Then James was back: “Don’t do it,” he said. “Nobody moves. If anybody tries to go out, I’ll set it off.”
“Sure, pal,” said Frank. “We’re going to close up, to make sure no one gets out, okay?”
“That’s what I told you to do—”
Emergency doors slid into place, sealing off all entrances. If he set off the bomb, the effects, hopefully, would be contained.
“Okay,” said Frank. “It’s all right. I’m sure we can reach an understanding.” Security guards moved into position outside the doors. “Now, what’s the problem? And what can we do to make it right?”
“I want some airtime.” James’s voice was crisp, sharp. “I want HV coverage. I have something to say to the country.”
“HV coverage?” More security people were arriving, fanning out. “We can’t do that, James. We don’t have the connections.”
“Don’t try to play me. You can do whatever you want. Get me the media people.”
“We can’t manage that, sir. You have to be reasonable.”
He smiled pleasantly. “No, I don’t. I don’t have to be reasonable at all. And it would be a good idea if you didn’t lie to me. I know you can make it happen. If I’m wrong about that, if you really can’t, everybody in here is dead.”
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