“Stuck? How could it be stuck? I mean, if it can fire off omegas, it should be able to clear out itself.”
“Not necessarily,” said Jon. “You could be stuck in orbit somewhere but still send out, say, projectiles.”
“Wait a minute.” Matt tried to laugh, but couldn’t manage it. “You’re suggesting the omegas might be a cry for help?”
“I’m open to a better explanation.”
“That’s one hell of a way to get people’s attention. Get them to come rescue you by blowing them up.”
“I doubt it thinks in terms of people,” said Jon. “It might be that it would be shocked to discover there were living creatures, people, on planetary surfaces.” For a long time no one spoke. “It feels right,” he said, finally. “I bet that’s exactly what’s been happening.”
“For millions of years?” Matt was laughing now. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why don’t we ask it?” said Hutch.
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“I have an idea, but you’ll have to come in closer and join us first. Do we want to do that?”
AS SHE WATCHED the McAdams approach, Hutch wished she had a term for indigestible.
“We ready to go?” asked Matt.
“Let’s do it.” She opened the cargo hatch, and Phyl took the lander out again. Hutch turned on its lights to draw Frank’s attention, and ran it back and forth several times. Then she directed Phyl to begin the demonstration.
Phyl brought it back toward the Preston. Toward the open cargo door. Very slowly. And bumped it against the hull. Too far to the right. Backed it off and tried again. Too low this time. A third effort went wide left.
The lander hesitated in front of the door, seemingly baffled.
Frank sent a message: You question mark.
Antonio laughed.
Hutch replied no.
Matt asked what it had said.
“It wants to know,” Antonio said, “if Hutch is the lander. If the lander is the intelligence inside the ship.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It has no way to know what’s going on,” said Hutch. “Before it saw the lander earlier today, it probably thought it was talking directly to the ship.” She grinned. “I’m beginning to like him.”
“Frank?”
“Sure. Who else?” She traded amused glances with Antonio, then flashed the strobe. Three short. Three long. Three short. The old SOS signal. “Matt, time to send out yours.”
“Will do.”
The launch door in the McAdams opened, and its lander soared into the night. It crossed to the apparently hapless vehicle still trying to get back into the Preston cargo bay, moved alongside it, nudged it left, pushed it lower, and guided it through the hatch.
Hutch flashed the SOS again, followed by Frank question mark.
Pause. Then the patch brightened.
Yes.
“ALL RIGHT,” MATT said. “We go home and report what we found. We have intelligent plasma out here. Or whatever. They’re going to love that. It got too close to the core, and now we think it’s stuck. You know what’ll happen: They’ll be coming out here to talk to the dragon. And somebody will be crazy enough to try to figure out a way to break it loose.” He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things. At the moment, Hutch was the suspect. “Well,” he said, “at least we’ll get clear of it. It’ll be somebody else’s call.”
“That’s not what’ll happen,” said Hutch. “Most people will react the way you just did. This place will be declared off-limits. The idiots who thought Jon’s drive was dangerous will be confirmed. And nobody will come near the place.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” The creature’s eyes stared at her out of the navigation screen. “Talk about eternity in hell.”
“Well, look. It’s not up to us anyhow.”
She nodded. “Right. And the omegas will keep coming. For a long time. We’ve seen the kind of damage they do.”
“You’ve been talking to it. Tell it to stop.”
“I plan to try.”
“Good.”
ANTONIO’S NOTES
This entire exercise has had an air of unreality about it from the beginning.
What no one has said, but what I am sure they’ve all been thinking is: Why does it not disentangle itself from the cloud and show us what it truly is? Is it so terrifying? Surely it would not seem so to itself. It may be that it is wholly dependent on the cloud, perhaps for sustenance. And then there is the possibility that, despite Jon’s theorizing, it is the cloud.
When I mentioned it to Hutch, she told me that she doesn’t believe any living creature could be that large.
—Thursday, March 13
chapter 37
HUTCH SAT ON the bridge, wearily trying to figure out how to expand the vocabulary. How do you say omega cloud with blinking lights? How to establish a unit of time? How to ask what kind of creature it is?
“If it’s not native to this area,” asked Antonio, “how did it get around?”
“There’s only one way I can think of,” said Jon. “It absorbs dust or gas and expels it.”
“A jet.”
“Has to be.”
The eyes remained open. Stayed focused on them. “It never sleeps,” said Matt.
“Looks like.”
Antonio got up. “Well, am I correct in assuming we won’t be leaving in the next few minutes?”
“I think that’s a safe guess.”
“Okay. In that case I’m going to head back for a while. I’m wiped out.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No,” said Hutch. “I’m fine. You go ahead.”
He nodded. “Call me if you need me.”
She turned back to the screen image. The eyes. You and me, Frank. She blinked the lights. Frank blinked back.
How long have you been here? My God, a million years in a place like this. Has anybody else been by to say hello?
Maybe a billion years. Are you immortal? I suspect you could teach those idiots at Makai something about survival.
She thought back across her life. It seemed a long time ago, eons, since as a kid barely out of flight school, she’d taken Richard Wald to Quraqua. Since she’d stood outside that spooky city that no one had ever lived in on Quraqua’s airless moon. It had been constructed by an unknown benefactor, thought to be the Monument-Makers. But who really knew? It was supposed to draw the lightning of an approaching omega away from the cities of that unhappy world. It hadn’t worked.
Frank, if that was you sending the clouds, you’ve been stuck out here a long time. How could a sentient being stay sane?
The eyes looked back at her.
Matt said something about why were they waiting around? Nothing more to be done here. Why not start back tonight?
“Let me talk to it a bit more, Matt. Be patient. This is the reason we came.”
The expression in the eyes never changed.
What are you thinking?
She blinked the lights again.
It blinked back.
PHYL’S VOICE RETRIEVED her from a dream. “…Ship out there…” She recalled something about a woodland, a sliver of moon, and lights in the trees. But it faded quickly, an impression only, less than a memory. “…Edge of the cloud.”
There was nothing new on-screen. “Say again, Phyl.”
“There’s a ship—” She stopped. “Matt wants to talk to you. They’ve probably seen it, too.”
“You mean a ship other than the McAdams?”
“Yes, Hutch.”
“On-screen, please.” It was box-shaped. Covered with shielding. Like the Preston. “Can you give me a better mag?”
“You have maximum.”
Its navigation lights were on. “It looks like us.”
Phyllis put Matt through. “Hutch, you see it?”
>
“I see it. Phyl, where is it?”
“Forward. Directly along the face of the wall. About four thousand klicks.”
“It’s almost in the cloud,” said Matt.
It could have been the Preston, even to the extent that the armor appeared to be a series of plates tacked on. “Open a channel,” she said.
“You have it.”
Hutch hesitated. An alien ship? That meant another language problem. At least. “Hello,” she said. “This is the Phyllis Preston. Please respond.”
She waited. And heard a single word: “Hello.”
She stared at the image. “Phyl—?”
“No mistake, Hutch. They’re speaking English.”
“Help us. Please.”
“That can’t be,” said Matt. “Not out here.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, either.” She played it back.
Hello.
Help us. Please.
Male voice. Perfect accent. A native speaker. “Sounds like you,” she said. She stared up at the image, at the boxy ship that shouldn’t be there. “Who are you?”
“Help us—”
“Identify yourself, please.”
Matt broke in: “Who the hell are you?”
“I’ve got it, Matt,” she told him on a private channel. Then she switched back: “Please tell us who you are. What is your situation?”
She listened to the carrier wave. After about a minute, it was gone.
“They’re adrift,” said Phyl.
Hutch called Antonio and asked him to come forward. He appeared moments later, in a robe, looking simultaneously startled and bleary. “Yes?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She explained while he gaped at the display. “I want to take a look,” she said. “But I don’t know what we’ll be getting into.”
“And you don’t have any idea who that is?”
“No.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
She informed Matt. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll meet you there.”
“No. Stay where you are.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. Stay put until we find out what this is about. And let me talk to Jon for a minute, please?”
“Sure. hang on. He’s in back.”
Moments later, Jon got on the circuit. “That’s really strange,” he said.
“Did anybody else have access to the Locarno?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Anybody work with you on it? Maybe before you came to us?”
“I had some help, yes. But nobody who could have gone on and finished the project on his own.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“All right. That leaves us with the technicians who installed it.”
“They wouldn’t be able to figure out the settings. Anyway, you’re forgetting how big everything is out here, Hutch. Even if somebody else had the drive, if they had twenty ships, the chance of any two of them running into each other in this area is just about nil.”
“Then how do you explain it? The guy speaks English.”
“I can’t explain it. But if you want my advice—”
“Yes?”
“Leave it and let’s go home.”
She would have liked to assure the creature she’d be back, but she could think of no quick way to do it.
When they pulled away, minutes later, the eyes were still trained on her.
THE SHIP LAY just outside the wall, its navigation lamps still on. It had remained silent after the original transmission.
It looked like a vehicle humans might have put together. Yet, as they approached, they saw that the hull, armored as it was, possessed a suppleness that placed it ahead of any designs currently in use. It had to be one of ours, had to be. But it was different in a way she couldn’t quite pin down.
And, all that aside, what was it doing here?
“So,” asked Antonio, as Phyl brought them alongside the other ship, “what do we do now?”
The shielding on the Preston covered the main and cargo hatches, but it was designed to open up when needed. Someone standing outside the ship would have no trouble seeing the seams where the armor lifted away. The arrangement on the intruder vessel looked identical.
“I’m not sure. We can’t really go over there and knock on the door.”
“I don’t think I’d want to do that in any case.” Antonio took a long deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t like any part of this.”
“Range one hundred meters,” said Phyl. “Still no reaction. Do we want to go closer?”
“No. Not for the moment.” She looked past the ship, into the wall, half-expecting to see another eye. But there was only dust and gas, darkening until it became lost in itself. “Matt?”
“Go ahead.”
“Has anything changed back there?”
“Negative.”
“It’s still there? The creature?”
“Yes, ma’am. Eyes are still open. It probably misses you.”
Actually, she thought, it might. Probably been a long time since it had anyone to talk to.
“What do we do now, Hutch?”
“Wish I knew. It would help if we didn’t have to deal with the armor. If we could see into the bridge, we could get a better idea what we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, well, me, I wish for world peace.” Antonio made an annoyed sound deep in his throat. “If they don’t answer up, I don’t see what we can do.”
“I’m getting increased electromagnetic activity,” said Phyl.
“Where? from the ship?”
“No. From the cloud.”
“Let me see.”
Phyl put the numbers on-screen.
They were going up fast. Hell, they were spiking. “Heads up, Antonio,” she said. She took control of the ship and fired the mains. The ship jerked forward, and they were thrown back into their chairs.
“What’s going on?” asked Antonio.
She heard Matt’s voice, too, but she was preoccupied at the moment.
The cloud was lighting up.
Hutch turned hard to port, went lower, and ran it to full throttle. But a starship is a lumbering thing.
The sky behind them lit up.
“Lightning,” said Phyl. “I think it was directed at us.”
“Keep the wall on-screen,” she said.
“I can’t. Not from this angle. The aft telescopes are sealed.”
“Unseal them, Phyl. Come on.”
“Working.”
She watched the screens. Saw clouds and stars dead ahead. “Matt.”
“Listening.”
“It attacked us. Stay clear. We are okay.”
The cloud wall appeared on-screen. Glowing. Getting brighter.
She cut to starboard.
Come on.
The sky behind lit up and the ship shuddered. The displays failed, and the lights went off and blinked back on.
“Lightning bolt aft,” said Phyl.
One by one, the screens came back.
“It’s starting again,” said Phyl. “Energy levels rising.”
“Phyl, how much time was there between bolts?”
“Thirty-seven seconds, Hutch.”
She could hardly move under the pressure of acceleration.
Antonio was clinging to his chair. “Can we outrun it?” he asked.
“A lightning bolt? No.” She was watching the time. Counting the seconds. At thirty-five, she lifted the nose and again moved hard to starboard.
The screens lit up.
“That one missed, Hutch. May I congratulate you on your maneuver?”
She turned back to port. Headed straight out from the wall, trying to put it as far behind as she could. And she had half a minute again. But the Preston was moving along now at a pretty good clip.
“Can we get clear?” demanded Antonio.
“Sit tight, and I’ll let you know. Give me a countdown, Phyl.”
She swerved again. Superluminals weren’t really built for this sort of thing.
“Three.”
Cut back. Dived.
Held steady, past the end of the countdown. “It did not fire.”
Swerved. And as she came out of it, something massive struck the ship. The engines died. The lights went out. Fans stopped running, and the screens went off. She rose slightly against the harness. They’d lost artificial gravity.
“It came off the pattern,” said Antonio.
“I know.”
The emergency lights came on. The fans restarted, and the flow of air began again. “I guess it doesn’t play by the rules.” She threw her head back in the chair. Nothing she could have done. It had come down to pure guesswork. “Phyl, what is our status?”
The lights flickered, but stayed on.
“Phyl?”
There was no response.
“She’s down,” said Antonio.
They were drifting in a straight line, an easy target for a second shot. No way the damned thing could miss. Frank, you are a son of a bitch. “Matt, do you read me? We’ve been hit. Stay away from the cloud. Do not try to retrieve us.”
“You really think Frank did this?” asked Antonio. “He’s thousands of kilometers away.”
“Maybe there’s another one here. I don’t know—”
There was no answer from Matt. Damn, she didn’t have enough power to transmit over a distance of four thousand klicks. What was she thinking?
She was suddenly aware of being pushed against her harness.
“What’s going on?” said Antonio.
“We’re slowing down.”
“How’s that happening?” His voice was a notch or two higher than normal.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we didn’t really get clear of the cloud.” The only thing she could imagine was that something had grabbed them. Was pulling them back. She looked again at the blank screens.
LIBRARY ENTRY
It’s ended, then.
And that cool summer night when you and I
Might have walked together beneath the stars
Will never come.
—Sigma Hotel Book
chapter 38
“HUTCH, DO YOU read?” Matt listened to the crackle of cosmic static. It was hard to make much out at this range, but the Preston seemed to be tangled in long tendrils of cloud. “Goddam it,” he said, “I knew something like this was going to happen.”
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