Starhawk (A Priscilla Hutchins Novel)

by McDevitt, Jack

  * * *

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  The details of what happened at Lalande are not yet clear. We know that one of the captains, Joshua Miller, died, but that all of the passengers returned unharmed. And we should consider that taking children on flights to other stars, while it may present extraordinary educational opportunities, nevertheless entails a substantial level of risk. Assistance, should they need it, is simply too far away. If the World Space Authority had been able to launch a rescue vehicle from the space station when it first learned a bomb had been planted aboard the Gremlin, Captain Miller might be alive today.

  The hard reality is that, had the Copperhead not happened to be close to Lalande, where the bomb exploded, there might have been no survivors. The death of Captain Miller constitutes a clear statement of the courage and dedication of those who operate the interstellars. But that courage and dedication may not be enough to prevent a greater disaster eventually. Are we going to wait until we lose, perhaps, an entire vehicle filled with young people, as almost happened here?

  Children do not grasp the hard fact that their lives are being put at risk. It is one thing for adults to take their chances on a flight for which aid, if it is needed, may simply not be available. It is something else entirely to put our sons and daughters on such a flight. Either we should call a halt, or we should provide the Authority with the means to ensure reasonable protection for interstellar travelers.

  —The New York Times, November 25, 2195

  * * *

  ON THE NET

  I guess there will always be loons who want to bomb people they don’t know.

  —Brickoven2

  We need the death penalty back.

  —Bobmontana

  Brickoven’s right. We’ll never run short of maniacs.

  —MariaY

  Hard to figure how you get a bomb on board a starship. Last I heard, they had weapon detectors. Haven’t heard an explanation, but obviously somebody wasn’t paying attention.

  —Sollyforth

  Sollyforth doesn’t seem to be aware that this is the first time ever somebody tried to bomb a spaceship. I’d have been surprised if they had intercepted the bomber.

  —billreever

  Billreever obviously doesn’t know they do routine checks at the shuttles.

  —Sollyforth

  Hey Solly, the shuttles don’t provide the only access to the Wheel. Some people, insiders I guess, are able to use landers. The search procedures only apply at the terminals.

  —billreever

  Well, whatever the reality is, when they catch the guy who did this—and it will be a guy, it’s never a woman—they should fry him.

  —Bobmontana

  That’s sexist, Bob. Women are just as capable of behaving like lunatics as guys are. They just don’t do it as often. Remember that mother in the Middle East a few months ago whose kid blew himself up in a temple and killed a dozen people? She said she was proud of him. That’s as loony as it gets.

  —MariaY

  Chapter 13

  THE CERTIFICATION CEREMONY was a month away. Until then, Priscilla’s time was her own. The normal routine for a new pilot was to lock down an assignment with one of the deep-space corporations and take some leave. Priscilla needed to get away. Go home and put Lalande behind her rather than spend a week or two on the Wheel. She was tired of being closed in, of the centripetal halfhearted gravity generated by the spinning space station, and of being so far from the nearest beach. Yes, it was November, but she liked beaches. So she called home. Then she called Jake to say good-bye.

  “Enjoy yourself,” he said. “Have a big time.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “How’s Tawny?”

  “She’s good.”

  “Your mom going to take her?”

  “Absolutely. Tawny and I will be headed for Princeton in the morning.”

  “Good. She’s a lucky cat. Oh, by the way, I have news.”

  “You’re going to be the new WSA director.”

  He laughed. “No. Even better: I’m retiring.”

  “You’re kidding, Jake.”

  “No. I’m pulling the plug.”

  “You spend a few weeks with me, and it’s all over, huh? Well, that’s pretty much the way I’ve always affected good-looking guys.”

  That broke him up. “Priscilla, you’re priceless.”

  “So where are you going?”

  “The Blue Ridge. I’m going to settle in Virginia.”

  “That’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

  “It’s time.”

  “Why Virginia? I thought you were from Pittsburgh.”

  “I have a cabin up there. It’s been my vacation spot for years.”

  “Well, I’m happy for you, Jake. But I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too, Priscilla. If you ever need me, just call—”

  * * *

  HER LIFETIME AMBITION went beyond mere piloting. She wanted more than simply taking an interstellar into deep space. There was nothing intrinsically interesting about that. She expected to go farther, to get onto the exploration side. Head for places no one had ever seen. Most of the pilots did nothing more than haul passengers and cargo between research stations and, in a couple of cases, service people working at extraterrestrial archeological sites, places where civilizations had once flourished but which, for reasons not yet clearly understood, had grown dysfunctional and died, taking the inhabitants with them. There was only one known world with living intelligent beings. That was the awkwardly named Inakademeri, an attempt to render in English one of the inhabitants’ own names for their world. Priscilla could never understand why the experts hadn’t settled on something a bit less difficult to pronounce. Surely, the natives had other names for their world. In any case, it had been shortened to Nok.

  Nok was not a place anyone would want to visit. The aliens were bipeds whose appearance was not wildly different from that of humans, but there was a problem. They were impossibly boring. They were locked in a centuries-old series of conflicts arising out of politics and religion and anything else they could think of to fight over. Fortunately, their technology was nineteenth-century, more or less. But, as one of her teachers had put it, they lacked history majors.

  Reproductions of their art hung in museums, and translations of their literature had been made available. But they wrote long-winded novels, painted abstracts that Priscilla could make no sense of, and practiced religions that, in some instances, advocated killing nonbelievers. Their advocates claimed it was simply a matter of giving them time to develop. The bad news was that they’d had roughly a ten-thousand-year head start over humans. Maybe in the end, she thought, we would discover that whatever occupants on other worlds looked like, they would all behave uncomfortably like us. Except possibly worse. There might, in the end, be no aliens worth getting to know. At least none close enough for us to find.

  But she was forgetting the Monument-Makers. And whoever had been at Talios.

  Priscilla had sat in on a conversation in the Cockpit the night before she’d left on her qualification run. She’d heard Preacher Brawley, one of the most respected pilots in the business, going on about how the age of exploration was over. The various governments, after two decades, saw interstellar flight as nothing but a drain on resources. And private corporations were exclusively involved in making money. Tours, orbiting hotels, and potential colonies. But the corporations did not want to make investments that had only a long-term payoff, let alone do any blue-sky science. She suspected that Kosmik would gladly sell off their interstellar operations if they could find a buyer. And the governments were doing everything they could to withdraw funding.

  So now, mostly, we weren’t doing much other than transporting cargo and passengers. There were several small, pr
ivately funded operations, like the Academy Project, that were actually trying to move farther out. But they needed resources.

  She would, for the time being, have to settle. Kosmik, Inc. had an office just off the main concourse. She’d submitted a résumé within hours of getting back from the certification flight. Her shuttle didn’t leave until four, so she had plenty of time. Why not take some good news home?

  She called them. “My name’s Hutchins,” she said to the young man who answered. “I’d like to work for Kosmik. As a pilot.”

  He passed her along to an older guy with heavy eyebrows and a receding hairline. He looked out at her from the display. “You look a little young, ma’am. How much experience do you have?”

  “I’ll be receiving my license next month.”

  “Are you on the Wheel now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looked away momentarily. Seemed to be speaking to someone else. “When can you come in?”

  * * *

  HIS NAME WAS Howard Broderick. He was chewing his lip. “So you want to do missions for us, is that right?”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Broderick. I’d like very much to be part of Kosmik.”

  He took a couple more chews, glanced down at a notepad, then looked up at her. “Why?”

  “Because Kosmik is leading the way in an age of discovery. They’re making history. I’m not sure that we’ve ever done anything more significant than what is happening right now. I want to be part of it.”

  “I see.” His eyes narrowed. “You were on the mission that came in yesterday, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re smiling. Why?”

  She was wondering how he’d react if she told him that she’d helped rescue a cat. “I was just thinking how much I’ve looked forward to this moment.”

  “Yes. I’m sure. It says here you lost Captain Miller. Not you, but the mission you were part of.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry to say that’s correct.”

  “Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  She ran through it again, avoiding some of the more difficult details. And again she faced the question she suspected she’d hear a few more times before this was over. “How did they decide who was going to go down to the cargo bay?”

  “Captain Miller simply went down without telling anyone what he intended to do.” That was, of course, the truth.

  “And nobody understood what was going on?”

  “Mr. Broderick, I’ve told you as much as I know.”

  “I see.” He wasn’t impressed with her answer. As if she should have been aware. He exhaled. Nodded. “Is there anything else we should know?”

  “I think that’s about it.”

  “If we decide to take you on, when would you be able to start?”

  “The certification ceremony’s December 22.”

  “That’s irrelevant, Priscilla. You’re already certified. The ceremony’s just a ceremony. So when could you start?”

  “It’s been a long haul. I’d like to get a few days off.”

  “Okay. Make sure we have your code. We’ll see you back here next Friday. December 4.”

  “Thank you.” She tried to keep her voice level. “I can do that.”

  “Excellent. Congratulations and welcome aboard.”

  * * *

  NEWSDESK

  After all these years, it’s difficult to see what possible benefit can come out of space exploration, with its enormous costs and assorted risks. We’ve known for a long time that there are other intelligences in the universe although after more than thirty years of looking around, we’ve yet to find anyone we can talk to, other than the barbarians on Inakademeri. And we clearly have nothing to learn from them.

  Our explorers have gone out more than sixty light-years. We’ve seen some ruins, and we’ve discovered the Great Monuments, probably the one serious benefit we’ve gotten from all this. But the reality is that we’ve had better sculptors at home though no one wants to admit it.

  We live on a crowded planet, beset by widespread famine and plagued by the environmental meltdown caused by ancestors who ignored the problem until it got out of control. And we are still charging around bombing each other.

  There is no intent here to belittle the accomplishment of those who gave us the means to reach out and conquer the vast distances that separate us from other worlds. But the hard reality is that the resources being used to send vehicles to the stars are desperately needed at home. Let’s take care of our own world before we go looking for others. Let’s not repeat old mistakes.

  —Gregory MacAllister, Baltimore Sun,

  November 26, 2195

  Chapter 14

  IF YOU SPEND twenty-seven years in space, nineteen of them piloting interstellars, you tend to lose contact with the bonds of Earth. Friends wander away, your family dissipates until only a few cousins and nephews remain, and the neighborhood in which you grew up changes so much that it’s no longer recognizable. Visit, and you’re a stranger. Consequently, Jake had no reason to return to Pittsburgh. Instead, he’d always liked remote places. Growing up, he’d thought that one day he’d like to live on an island. Or a mountaintop. It was probably the same drive that took him to the stars.

  The Blue Ridge was a natural place for him to settle. His cabin was located halfway up a mountain, near Radford, Virginia, with a spectacular view of Claytor Lake. He had a few acquaintances but no friends in the area. It was his kind of country—rugged, beautiful, a place where you could expect to be left alone. It had never occurred to him that when the day came on which he actually settled into the cabin, he might not want to be left alone.

  He’d visualized a different sort of retirement, one in which his colleagues, over the course of his last few months, would tell him how much they’d miss him, in which his bosses would acknowledge his work with a certificate, which he’d frame and hang over the sofa. There’d be a farewell party at the end. He’d expected to come to it with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that he’d done exactly what he’d wished with his life and with the knowledge that it had counted for something. He would arrive on the Blue Ridge bearing the respect of the professionals with whom he’d worked. Of people who’d been around a while. And of people like Priscilla, who were just starting and would form the next generation. Instead, he couldn’t even look into the eyes of those whom he’d known all these years. Least of all, into Priscilla’s.

  She’d pretended everything was okay. But she knew what he’d done. And God help him, if he were put in the same situation today, he’d probably do the same thing. Stall and pretend he didn’t know what Joshua was really saying until he went below and shut off the air.

  It was raining when he arrived at the cabin. He’d never been here before for more than a couple of weeks at a time. But it had officially been his home for nine years. He dropped his bags on the front deck, listening to the downpour and the wind while the lock clicked open. No other building was visible although at night, a few places across the slopes would light up. And, of course, if he was watching at the right moment, he’d be able to see the maglev going through the valley on its way to Roanoke.

  He went inside and closed the door. A sudden rush of rain swept across one of the windows. Jake crossed to the liquor cabinet, opened it, and poured himself a glass of rum. Then he settled into a chair, sipped his drink, put the glass down on a side table, and let his head sink back. It’s not always a good thing, he thought, when you run into desperate circumstances and find yourself in the presence of a hero. You may come out alive, but it was possible nothing else that mattered would survive.

  He was a different person now than he had been when he was called to go out and take over Priscilla’s certification flight. He knew more about himself than he had then. He’d been tested and found wanting. And he’d have to live with it. />
  Well, okay. How many other guys would have been willing to step up in that kind of situation?

  He showered and got into fresh clothes. There was nothing in the refrigerator, but he didn’t want to have dinner alone anyhow. Not today. So he went down to Earl’s, where he routinely ate when he was in town.

  * * *

  IT WAS EARLY, and there were only three or four other customers in the place. He knew the waitresses, and David the bartender. David was a heavyset African-American who knew what Jake did for a living and consequently treated him like a VIP. Earl himself was an invisible presence, a guy who lived in Richmond and owned a chain of bistros.

  “What’ll you have, Jake?” asked David. “Been a while.”

  “Hi, David.” He sat down at the bar. “A light beer would be good. How’ve you been?”

  David gave him a big smile. “Pretty good, actually.” He picked up a glass, filled it, and set it down in front of him. “I’m opening my own business.”

  “Really? You’re not leaving here, are you?”

  “Yes. This is my last week.”

  “Well, congratulations,” said Jake. “You bought a bar?”

  “A restaurant. In Charlottesville. I’ll be moving down there next week.” He was muscular, a guy who might have been a linebacker in his earlier days. And he looked happy.

  “Good luck with it, David.” He picked up the beer and took a swallow. “What kind of restaurant is it?”

  “It’s going to be a Bumpers.” He handed Jake a flyer. “It opens the weekend after next.”

  “Knockout waitresses,” said Jake.

  David laughed. “Just like here.”

  “I hope you make a million up there, David.”

  “I hope so, too.” He glanced at the overhead. “How’s life on the space station? I see you helped rescue some girls last week.”

  “More or less.”

  He had to break off to pour drinks for a couple of customers. Then he was back: “How long you going to be here this time, Jake?”

  “I’m home permanently. I’ve retired.”