While they’d been examining it, the ship had taken off, with Tor on board, for a white class-F star whose catalog number ended in 97. She remembered that much. It was still en route to that same star, and was expected to arrive in about 170 years. “I don’t know whether you’ve kept up with this,” she said, “but the radio signals from the chindi satellites were tracked to a star near the Eagle.”
Rudy pressed a finger against his display. “Makai 4417,” he said.
“I vote we take a look,” said Hutch.
Rudy nodded. “I was going to suggest that myself.”
Matt shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”
“Where else do we want to go?” asked Jon.
Rudy was looking down at his notes. “There’s another old mystery out there.”
“What’s that?” asked Matt.
Rudy indicated one of the pictures on the wall. It looked like a university building, two stories, lots of glass, well-kept grounds. “This is the Drake Center, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Circa 2188.”
“SETI,” said Matt.
“The only place ever to receive a confirmed signal.” He was wearing a broad smile. “I think the guy in charge at the time was also named Hutchins.”
Matt and Jon looked her way.
“My father,” she said.
“Really?” Matt shook his head. Would wonders never cease? “No wonder you took up piloting.”
“He disapproved. But that’s another story.”
“The signal came from Sigma 2711. Roughly fourteen thousand light-years out.”
“And they never heard it again,” said Matt.
“It came in sporadically,” Rudy continued, “for about fifteen years. Then it went quiet. We were able to translate it. Hello, Neighbor. That sort of thing.
“Sigma 2711 is a class-G star, somewhat older than the sun, and a bit larger. Even when FTL became available, it was still much too far to allow a mission. But we sent a reply. Hello, out there. We received your message.” He shook his head. “It’ll get there in about fourteen thousand years.”
Her father had always been an optimist.
“Okay.” Jon was enjoying himself. “Yes. Absolutely.”
That gave them two stops. They needed one more. Something at a range of about twenty-two thousand light-years.
“There’s a black hole.” Jon got up and showed them on one of the charts. “It’s about six thousand light-years out from the core.”
“Tenareif,” said Rudy.
“Why would you want to go to a black hole?” asked Matt.
Rudy was so excited he could scarcely contain himself. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”
Hutch couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Why?”
“Because I’ve never been able to make sense of the pictures. What’s it like when you’re actually there? I mean, what does it feel like? Does it really look like a hole in space?”
“Okay.” Jon sat back down. “Are we all agreed?”
“Sounds like a hell of a flight,” said Matt.
AFTER SHE’D LOST Tor, Hutch had gone into a funk for a time. There was always somebody at one of her presentations trying to connect with her. But she was emotionally played out. Maureen lectured her, told her she’d become antisocial, and wondered when she’d stop hiding under the bed.
Eventually, she began to go out again. Nothing serious. Dinner and a show. Occasionally she’d take one of her companions into her bed. But it was all more or less academic. She went through a period in which she was actively looking for another Tor, but finally concluded it wasn’t going to happen. Dinner and a show. And maybe a night over. That was what her life had become.
As they moved into the final two weeks before departure, there were three guys more or less in her life. David, Dave, and Harry. She amused herself thinking how she might have encouraged the advances of Dave Calistrano, an executive of some sort at the Smithsonian. That would have given her three guys named Dave. It would have summed up nicely her current status.
She called each and explained she would be gone a long time. (Odd how she described the length of the mission, which would extend into the summer, as short to Maureen and Charlie. Back before you know it. But long, my God, we’ll be out there forever, to Harry and the two Daves.)
They took it well. All three said they’d known it was coming, and they’d be here when she got back.
God, she missed Tor.
IN EARLY NOVEMBER, she recruited a specialist and visited Union to inspect the work that was being done on the shielding. You wouldn’t have been able to recognize the Preston. Save for the exhaust tubes, the ship was effectively inside a rectangular container. Sensors, scopes, and navigation lights had all been transferred from the hull to the shielding. Someone had even taken time to imprint the port side with PROMETHEUS FOUNDATION. Rudy would be proud to see that.
The specialist, whose name was Lou, looked at the paperwork, examined the ships, and pronounced everything acceptable. He was a tall, thin, reedy individual with a remarkably high voice. Difficult to listen to, but he came highly recommended by people she trusted.
“It’ll be adequate,” he said. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. But you won’t be going any closer to the core than it says here, right?”
“That’s correct. But you’d prefer to see more shielding?”
“Technologically, this is about as effective as you can get.” They were standing at a viewport. “Once you’re there, you won’t be able to leave the ship, of course. Not even for a short time.”
“Okay. But the shielding will be sufficient?”
“Yes. The proper term, by the way, is armor. It will protect you.”
“All right.”
The prow of the McAdams was flat. The bridge viewports, buried in the armor, looked reptilian. “They can all be covered, closed off, and you must do that before you make your jump out there.”
“Okay.” She shook her head. “It looks like a shoe box.” With exhaust tubes sticking out of it. God help them if they got close to an omega.
Lou was all business. “Yes. They’ve armored the engines, too, so you can get to them if you have a problem.” He checked his notebook. “You’re aware they’ve been replaced.”
“Yes. I knew it would be necessary. Now I can see why.”
“Sure. With all that armor, the ship’s carrying too much mass for the original units. You have K-87s now. They have a lot more kick. In fact, you’ll get a smoother—and quicker—acceleration than you could before.”
“Same thing with the McAdams?”
“Right. One-twenty-sixes for the McAdams. It’s a bigger ship.”
It too looked like a crate.
Certification required a test run. Hutch watched from one of the observation platforms as Union techs took the Preston out and accelerated. They went to full thrust from cruise, and the tubes lit up like the afterburners of one of the big cargo ships. Lou was standing beside her, and before she could ask he reassured her. “It’s within the acceptable range of your exhaust tubes,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. We’d have changed them out if there’d been any problem.”
NOVEMBER 11 WAS a Sunday. It was warm, dry, oppressive for reasons she couldn’t have explained. Hutch was guest speaker at the annual Virginia State Library Association luncheon. She’d just finished and was striding out into the lobby when her commlink vibrated.
It was Jon. “Thought you’d want to know,” he said. “I just got word from the contractors. The ships are ready to go.”
PRISCILLA HUTCHINS’S DIARY
This will be my last night home for a while. Tomorrow I’ll stay at Union, then a Thursday launch. Back in the saddle again. Hard to believe.
—Tuesday, November 13
chapter 22
ANTONIO GIANNOTTI HAD a wife and two kids. The kids were both adolescents, at that happy stage where they could simultaneously make him confident about the future while they were sabotag
ing the present. Cristiana was good with them, probably as adept at managing their eccentricities as one could hope. But it wasn’t easy on her. Antonio was gone a lot. He was always telling her he would be an editor or producer in the near future, and things would settle down. It was something they both knew would never happen because he had no real interest in sitting in front of a computer display. But they could fall back on it, treat it as something more solid than a fantasy, when they needed to. This was one of those times.
Cristiana tolerated his odd hours, his occasional forays to distant places, his abrupt changes of plans. But the galactic core was a bit much, even for her. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” he told her. “It’s like being on the Santa Maria.”
“I know, Antonio,” she said. “I understand that. But seven or eight months? Maybe more?”
“After this, I’ll be up there with Clay Huston and Monica Wright.” They were the premier journalists of the age, courted by the networks, drifting on and off the big shows.
She didn’t care. She got weepy and wished he would reconsider. He’d be out there in the dark, nobody really knew where, out of touch. She wondered how many of Columbus’s crew had made it back to Spain. If something happened, she complained, she’d never know except that he wouldn’t come home. Let somebody else do it. “You don’t need to be Clay Huston,” she said. In the end, she hugged him, and the kids told him to be careful and said they’d miss him.
Antonio had spent thirty years as a journalist. He’d been a beat reporter in his early days, covering trials in Naples, and later in Palermo, and eventually the political circuit in Rome. He hadn’t been very good at it, and they’d shunted him off to the side, where he’d begun writing an occasional science column for Rome International. That was supposedly a dead end, an indication he was headed downhill, next stop the obituaries. But he’d shown a talent for explaining quantum physics in language people could actually understand. He began appearing on the networks, and quickly became “Dr. Science.” During that period he’d written Science for Soccer Fans, his only book, which was an effort to make the more arcane aspects of physics, chemistry, and biology accessible to the ordinary reader. The book had sold reasonably well and helped his reputation. Now he did the major science stories for Worldwide, and he was pleased with the way his career was going.
Why, then, was he making this flight to God knew where? To enhance his status? To be part of the science story of the decade? To collect material for a book that would jump off the shelves?
He wasn’t sure of the answer. To some extent, probably all of those reasons. But mostly he wanted to get serious meaning into his life. To get beyond the old boundaries. As a kid he’d been fascinated by the omega clouds, by the sheer malevolence behind a mechanism that seemed literally diabolical, a force that targeted not nature as a whole, but civilizations. An action that bestowed no imaginable benefit to whatever power had designed and unleashed the things.
It was commonly believed that intelligence was equated with civilized behavior and empathy. With compassion. Only idiots were wantonly cruel. But the clouds, powered by an advanced nanotechnology, had given the lie to all that. (As if six thousand years of history hadn’t.)
With luck, the mission of the Preston and the McAdams would at long last provide an answer. And how could he not want to be there when that happened?
DEPARTURE WAS SCHEDULED for 1600 hours. Antonio loved that kind of talk. Cristiana inevitably smiled at him when he dropped into jargon, whether it was journalistic, military, or scientific. She didn’t take him seriously because she knew he didn’t take himself seriously. And that was probably another reason she was so worried about this assignment. He’d become intense. Did not seem to recognize the danger. The little kid who’d wondered about the omegas was riding high in the saddle.
Cristiana had traveled to the NAU to be with him during the days prior to departure. They’d ridden the shuttle up to the station. It was the first time she had been off-world. She had put on a brave front, but she’d been close to tears.
Jon and Matt had shown up when he’d most needed them. They’d wandered into the departure area, exuding confidence and reassurance. Everything is going to be fine, Cristiana. Have no fear. We’ll bring your husband back with the story of his life. Well, maybe that last was a bit unsettling, but Jon had winked and looked as if they were all going out on a Saturday afternoon picnic. “We’ll take good care of him,” Matt had promised. Then, finally, it was time to go.
They’d never been separated more than a month. Cristiana had magnetic brown eyes, chestnut-colored hair, a figure that was still pretty good, and he realized he hadn’t really looked at her, taken her in, for years. She’d become part of his everyday life, like the kids, like the furniture. Something he took for granted. She was a bit taller than he was. There’d been a time when it embarrassed him, when he’d tried to stand straighter in her presence, reaching for the extra inch. But that was all long ago. He’d gone through their courtship convinced she would come to her senses and break it off, walk away, that the day would come when he’d look back longingly on his time with her. But it had never happened. She’d signed on for the long haul.
She’d known he had work to do during those last hours, other journalists to deal with, and she didn’t want to be in the way, so she settled for looking at the two ships. Antonio had seen pictures of them with their newly acquired shielding, so he knew what to expect. It was nevertheless something of a shock to look through the viewport and see the McAdams and the Preston. They looked like long metal crates with engines and attitude thrusters. Most of the gear one normally sees on a hull—sensors, antennas, dishes—had been moved onto the armor.
He showed her through the Preston, the ship on which he’d be riding. “Nice quarters,” she said. Then it was time to go. He embraced her, suddenly aware how fortunate he had been and how long it would be before he’d see her again.
THEY MET WITH the journalists in a briefing room. Hutch strolled in, queen of the world, shook hands with many of them who, by now, had become friends. Or at least, acquaintances. A woman waiting at the door wished Antonio luck, adding, “Don’t bring anything back,” a not-quite-joking reference to the widely held fears that the Mordecai mission was not a good idea.
Everybody was there, Goldman from the Black Cat, Shaw from Worldwide, Messenger from the London Times. All the biggies. And a lot of people he didn’t know.
Rudy moderated the press conference, fielding questions, standing aside for his colleagues. Some were even directed at Antonio. He’d violated the cardinal rule of journalism, had gone from covering the story to being the story. What do you expect to find out there, Antonio? How does it feel, making the ultimate trip? Do you have anything you’d like to say to the world before you leave?
They were the usual dumb questions, like the ones he’d been asking for years, but what else was there? He told them he was proud to be going, that he’d get everything down on the chip and bring it all back. “Don’t know yet what it’ll be,” he told them, “but it’ll be big.”
When they went down to the launch area, everybody followed.
Rudy was already there. He invited the newsmen inside the Preston. Goldman asked a couple of questions about the galactic core, then wondered who was riding in which ship.
“Antonio and I are on this one,” Rudy said. “Hutch is the pilot.”
She came in from somewhere, posed for pictures, then excused herself. “Have to do an inventory.”
“What do you have to inventory?” Messenger asked. “Doesn’t the AI take care of all that?”
Hutch flashed that luminous smile. “We’re talking about food, water, and air,” she said. “I feel more comfortable when I’ve checked it myself.”
“Is it true,” asked Shaw, “that you’ve got weapons on board?” He was a huge man, thick mustache, gray hair, and a world-weariness that lent gravitas to his questions.
“Hand weapons, yes. We also have extra go-pa
cks and e-suits. And some lightbenders.”
Lightbenders made people invisible. Shaw sniffed and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why?”
“It’s strictly precautionary. We may go groundside at Makai, the chindi site, or at Sigma.” She ducked through a hatch. “Excuse me. Been a pleasure.”
Abe Koestler, from the Washington Post, asked how long it would take to get to the first stop? To Makai?
“It’s about seven thousand five hundred light-years out,” said Antonio, who had done his homework. “That’s pretty much our limit on a single jump. In fact, it might be a little bit more. It’s possible we’ll come up short and have to do it in two stages. But it looks like about a month to get there.”
Koestler shook his head. Not an assignment he’d want. He was a dumpy little middle-aged guy who always looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. “You bring a good book?”
EVENTUALLY, IT WAS time. Matt and Jon left to go to the McAdams. Antonio told the newsmen that anyone who didn’t want to go with them should consider leaving. They trooped out after a last round of handshakes, Hutch closed the hatch behind them, and suddenly everything was deathly silent. “Are we ready to go?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Rudy.
Antonio was trying to look blasé, but he didn’t think it was working. His heartbeat had picked up. He wasn’t having second thoughts, but there was a part of him that would have liked to be outside with his colleagues.
“Relax, guys,” Hutch said. “You’ll enjoy this.”
ARCHIVE
Sisters and brothers in Jesus: While we gather here, two ships are making a leap into the dark that reminds us of the Pacific islanders who, a thousand years ago, rode fragile boats across unknown waters to see what lay beyond the horizon. We are once again reaching into a vast outer darkness. Let us take a moment and pray that the Lord will be with them, to guide their way.
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