“What do we need?” asked George.
“Food. Nobody expected the mission to go this long.”
“Surely we can do something about that,” said Tor. “You could have them send a supply ship. Meet us somewhere. Look at what the Academy is getting from this.”
It went quiet again. Hutch could not sort out her own feelings. The mission, her side of it, had lost two people. And who knew what lay ahead? She wasn’t a researcher. Her entire career had been devoted to moving people and supplies around. She had happily left others to stick their noses into dark corners.
Still, she empathized with the Contact people. They were onto something pretty substantial. Well beyond anything the superluminals had found before. Somebody was out there, somebody they might talk to, somebody who was apparently interested in neutron stars and living civilizations. After all these years, it would be a splendid door to open. And she had a chance to be there, on the threshold. With this least likely of crews. “I have a suggestion,” she said. “George, why don’t you get on the hypercomm, tell the director what we’ve run into. If nobody has an objection, we’ll go take a look at the closer target. The class G. If the director agrees, they might be willing to dispatch a second ship from Outpost. They can bring sandwiches and meet us at the target.”
“Suppose there’s nothing there,” said Tor. “Suppose the transmission is aimed at the supergiant?”
“We deal with that when we have to,” said Hutch.
“Suppose,” said George, “they won’t send the second ship?”
“They will,” said Hutch. “The discovery’s too big. When we report what we have, there’ll be a fleet running up our rear ends.”
GEORGE’S BODY HEALED more quickly than his psyche ever would. He sent a report of the Paradise incident to the Society’s acting secretary which, following on the deaths of ten of their colleagues on the Condor, would be devastating. It was even more painful for him personally because he could not avoid the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of two close friends.
It was as if their loss had been a direct result of his poor judgment. Yes, they had understood the danger and accepted it willingly; yes, he had put no pressure on anyone; yes, he had accepted the same risk as the others, had in fact stood in the forefront.
Nonetheless, they were dead, Pete struck down in the early stages of the attack, Herman killed while coming to George’s defense.
Hutch had sent out the required reports to the Academy and to the Department of Transportation, which would duly conduct their investigation of the incident. But George would have to handle the more difficult procedure, notifying Herman’s widow Emma, and Pete’s family. A son and daughter there.
Well, it was the responsibility of the chief of mission, he supposed. It was a task he’d never given thought to before setting out.
He had always believed that one day he’d succeed at his one prime ambition, that he’d make contact. It had happened, and it should have brought with it a sense of absolute pleasure. Even if the contact had come with savages. (Who could have thought?) So everything was skewed, and it had brought unrelenting bitterness down on his head.
Why had he not listened?
Hutchins had been right, and for that reason he resented her.
And yet…. He knew in his heart that, given the same situation, he’d make the same choice. How could he not? Even to show more caution, to hide in the lander, to have waved at the angels from behind a safe barricade of metal, the hatches locked and bolted, these would have been despicable acts, inviting someone with more heart to arrive and seize the glory.
There were times when it was necessary to face hazard, to throw the dice in the face of events and await the outcome. This had been one of those times, and if people were dead, then that was the occasional cost of enterprise. One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?
But still, the loss of Pete, and of his old friend Herman, cut him to the soul. And during those first days after the event, even the tranks could not help him.
George sent messages of condolence to the two families. His voice caught and he struggled to maintain his composure. When he’d finished he lay back on his couch and stared at the overhead.
Before leaving Paradise, they held their second memorial service.
Hutch posted virtual images of Herman and Pete, and everyone paid tribute. As the ship’s captain, she was expected to make the final remarks.
She observed that she had known both men for a relatively short time, but that they had been amiable companions, that they seemed to be honest men, faithful to their responsibilities, and that she’d been proud to venture with them into dark places. Pete, she pointed out, had put himself without hesitation into danger. He had led the way and made himself a prime target.
Herman had gone unhesitatingly to the assistance of his friends, and had consequently lost his life. What more need be said?
THE FLIGHT TO the class-G was subdued. They ran some sims, but they did not participate. Nick no longer rode across the desert in his purple turban, in a desperate race to rescue Alyx and Hutch from the licentious grasp of a warlord who, in the earlier days of the mission, had resembled George, but now looked like a standard heavy from central casting. Alyx no longer appeared as the half-naked jungle queen Shambiya, chasing down poachers and gunrunners. Tor had stopped running Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.
They played bridge, and they talked more, and read more. The party atmosphere had been left at Paradise. Meantime, Hutch and George recovered from their injuries, and she began to watch with some concern as their food dwindled. They would be down to less than a two-week supply when they arrived at their destination. But Outpost reported that their request had been duly relayed to the Academy, and that a relief vessel, the Wendy Jay, was en route.
Four days out, a panicky message came in from Virgil, who, still wrestling with the loss of the Condor, now found herself looking at two more fatalities. “Put together complete reports,” she told Hutch, specifying the areas she wanted detailed. “Take no further chances. I don’t care what else happens, we don’t want any more deaths.”
But the director stopped short of turning the mission around. Presumably she didn’t feel she had the authority to do that, Hutch decided.
Alyx sat down with her on the bridge one evening to tell her she was having trouble getting past the attack.
“Me, too,” Hutch confessed. It had been the most terrible thing she’d ever seen. Worse even than the army crabs on Beta Pac. It was frozen in her consciousness, something she replayed again and again, feeling the stark revulsion and terror that she was no longer sure had even been present during the original event, when she’d been too busy trying to stay alive to pay attention to her reaction. And there was something else she’d noticed about the experience. “I enjoyed killing the sons of bitches,” she said. “I ripped a few of them open, and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
“I can understand,” said Alyx.
She shook her head. “It’s the first time I’ve ever looked anything in the eye and killed it,” she said.
“I felt the same way. I wished I’d had a gun.”
“It’s just a part of myself that I never saw before.”
Alyx had been having problems, too. She talked about bad dreams. Fangs and retractable claws. “That’s what I remember, the way they just appeared.” And then she said the thing that Hutch would always remember: “It’s like discovering the universe doesn’t run on the rules you thought it did. It’s like standing at a bus stop at night and seeing the guy beside you turn into a werewolf. The angels were terrible. But what really disturbs me is just knowing such a thing could exist.”
During the next few days Alyx came back, and they talked about it again, and Hutch didn’t say much but mostly just listened. Sometimes the conversation went in other directions. They talked about ambitions, men, clothes, what lay ahead. But inevitably they return
ed to the terrible moments on the ground.
Gradually, Hutch’s own tendency to relive the experience began to fade. And the emotions associated with it fused into a kind of numbness. Something she could package and put away in a locked room that she simply did not visit anymore.
Meantime, she and Alyx forged a strong bond of empathy with each other.
THEY WERE STILL a couple of days away from the class-G when Tor appeared on the bridge. He didn’t seem to have much to say, but simply asked how she was holding up.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You seemed down.”
“I thought everybody seemed a bit down.”
“Touché.” He sighed. “The flight hasn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs, has it?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“I know this has been especially hard on you.”
She shrugged. “It’s been hard on us all.”
“If there’s anything I can do…”
She smiled her appreciation. “Thanks, Tor. I know.”
“Don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I won’t.”
“What do you think we’ll find up ahead?”
“Anybody’s guess,” she said. She had the sense of drifting down an endless track, littered with invisible satellites.
He gazed at her a long moment. “Hutch, I wish we’d had more time together. In the Arlington days.”
So did she. But that was a fresh realization, and she couldn’t entirely submerge a trace of resentment that he hadn’t tried a bit harder to hold on to her. “Me too,” she said in a neutral voice. “My schedule just never seemed to allow much time for socializing.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand.” He smiled, and she thought he was going to do it again, nod politely, excuse himself, leave the room, and not bring it up anymore. Or at least not for several more years, after which he’d show up again unexpectedly, implying that yes, he’d loved her all along, and he wished things had gone differently. Damn you, Tor.
“I just wanted you to know,” he was saying, “that I’ve always thought you were pretty special.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “Thanks. I think you’re pretty special, too.”
“Well.” He looked lost. “I should be going.” He kissed her chastely on the cheek. “If you ever need me, Hutch…” He paused in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment. Then he was gone.
Hutch opened a drawer in her console, fished out a pen, and flung it across the room.
THEY JUMPED BACK to sublight on schedule, at about 48 A.U.s from the central luminary, out where the signal would be passing through the system. Hutch deployed the dishes, and they began the now-familiar routine of searching for the incoming transmission.
George wished they had better communications technology, but seemed mollified when Hutch explained that he had gotten his money’s worth, that the Memphis systems were state-of-the-art, and that there were simply limits imposed by physics no matter how good the equipment was.
The males automatically tended to flirt with Alyx. By now, their affections for one another had deepened, had become something else. But Alyx never lost consciousness of what Hutch was feeling, and consequently tried to maintain an amiable distance.
“Do we know anything at all about this system?” she asked. “Have we even looked at it through a telescope?”
“Maybe through a telescope,” Hutch said. “But that doesn’t tell us much. There’s been no formal survey here.”
Her eyes grew luminous. “You know,” she said, “it’s kind of exciting to be first person into a solar system.”
“It is,” said Hutch. “This mission’s been a new experience for me, too.”
Bill broke in. “Message from the director.”
Hutch nodded, and Sylvia Virgil appeared on-screen. “Hutch,” she said, “I want to congratulate you on your accomplishments. You’ll understand I’m sorry about the losses. We all regret that there have been casualties. But I want to remind you that you are on a historic flight. Which means it is essential to document everything. Remember that the safety of the vessel and its passengers is our paramount concern. I know you’re getting far away from home. But this is a big prize we’re after. You’ll be interested in knowing that the network—that’s what they’re calling it in the media—is huge news back here. We’ll be sending out a few more ships to provide support. Keep us informed every step of the way, and we’ll try to have some of them rendezvous with you farther down the line.
“We’ve already dispatched the Henry Hunt and the Melinda Freestone to the supergiant, based on the possibility that BY68681551”—she read the catalog number of the star system they were in from notes—“is not the actual target. If it turns out that it is, let me know right away, and we’ll change their destination. Hutch, so you’re aware, everything we have in the Outpost area is being turned your way.”
She was worried about lawsuits.
“WE HAVE ACQUIRED the signal,” said Bill.
“Can you see the target?”
“Working on it.”
WITHIN HOURS, BILL found a planet in the path of the transmission. It was an ice world, maybe half again as big as Earth, the sun no more than a bright star in its black sky. Its atmosphere lay frozen on the bleak surface. Huge fractures, several of which would easily have swallowed the Swiss Alps, ran north and south. “Nothing ever lived there,” said Alyx, gazing at the images on the screens.
George was frowning. “It breaks the pattern.”
“What pattern?” asked Tor.
“Living worlds. Worlds with civilizations.”
“The neutron star doesn’t have a civilization,” said Nick.
Alyx, who was becoming an astronomy enthusiast, looked up from an image of a pair of colliding galaxies. “I wonder,” she said, “where the beginning of the chain is.”
Bill appeared on-screen. “I’ve located a stealth satellite. Looking for more.”
“Same type?”
“Keep in mind I can’t see it directly, Hutch. Only the spatial distortion. But nothing so far suggests anything different from the others.”
“Why?” asked George. “What can be here that could possibly interest anybody?” The frustration in his voice was evident. “Nick,” he demanded, “would you put an observation satellite here?”
Nick shrugged. “Not unless I wanted to watch the glaciers move.”
“That’s why they’re called aliens,” said Alyx. “They do stuff that nobody can understand.”
Bill used the sensors to look underground, but he detected no unusual geologic formations, no hint of any artificial structure, absolutely nothing of interest to the mission. There was no evidence that anything had ever happened on this world.
It had two moons, both frozen rocks, captured asteroids, neither more than a few kilometers in diameter. Both were misshapen. One moved in a retrograde orbit. Other than that, they, too, offered nothing of note.
“Maybe,” said George, “it’s just a relay station. Maybe we’re at the limit of the signal’s range from Paradise.”
“May I offer an observation?” asked the AI.
“Go ahead, Bill.”
“The power level in the transmission from Paradise suggests the signal could have gone well beyond this area. If I were to construct a relay station for this signal, it would not be here.”
“My head’s beginning to hurt,” said George. “Bill, do we have a second set of stealths?”
“I’ve been looking. We have no sunlight here to speak of, so they’re difficult to pick up. But I will continue to search.”
“How about if we pull out a short distance,” said Hutch, “and see whether we can hear an outgoing signal?”
WHILE THEY LOOKED, Bill announced that a second ship had arrived insystem.
“Our supplies,” said Nick.
It was the Wendy Jay.
Hutch instructed Bill to open a channel. “Captain Eichner is already on the circuit,” he sa
id. “Shall I patch him through?”
“Yes.” Hutch felt the glow people always do when friends show up in remote places. “I’ll take it on the bridge.”
Kurt wore a black jumpsuit with the Wendy patch on his shoulder. Despite the fact that he’d spent most of his professional career sealed in containers with climate control, he looked as if he’d been under the open sun too much. He had weather-beaten features, a long scarred nose (“dueling incident,” he’d once told her), deep blue eyes that you could swim in, and a smile that was both whimsical and cynical depending on which side of the room you happened to be on.
“Hutch,” he said, “it looks as if we can manage dinner after all.”
“I’m looking forward to it. What did you bring?”
There was a delay of almost a minute. The Wendy was still pretty far off. “Everything we need. What on Earth are you doing out here?”
Hutch made a pained face. “Looking for gremlins.”
He sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. “They tell me you’re caught up in some sort of tracking exercise.”
“More or less. Somebody put up a network of communications relay stations. This is our fourth stop.”
“Somebody other than us.”
“Looks like.”
The smile went whimsical. “So the crazies pulled it off, didn’t they?”
“They’re not crazy, Kurt.”
“I understand completely. But are you going on? Beyond this place?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know that either.” Bill was trying to get her attention. “Just a second, Kurt.”
“We have an outgoing signal,” he said.
“Is it a relay?”
“Do you mean, does it have the same characteristics as the other transmissions? Yes, it does. But it angles off at 133©.”
“This thing really wanders around.”
“Yes, it does.”
Another puzzle. Hutch thanked him, switched back to Kurt, and told him what Bill had reported. “Footprints of another civilization,” she said.
Chindi к-3 Page 21