Seeker

by Jack McDevitt

  The dwarf itself—a curious term for so monstrous an object—seemed to be simply a sphere of eerily lit mud-colored clouds, with a few reddish streaks and spots. Surface temperature checked in at 800°K. “The spots are storms,” Shara said. She was luminous that day. I had never seen her so filled with sheer joy. She was face-to-face with, as she put it, one of the objects that formed the gravitational center of her life.

  She stood by a viewport, bathed in its autumn light. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s a class-T,” she said. “Lot of methane. And it’s got water.”

  “Water?”

  She nodded. “Yep.”

  I went over and stood beside her and she embraced me. “Chase,” she said, “I take it all back. I’m glad I came.”

  “Good,” I said.

  We were still there, exchanging pleasantries, when Kalu’s baritone got our attention. “We have the transverse velocity,” he said.

  Shara nodded and started back for the ops center. “Let’s see what it looks like.”

  Kalu gave us a 3-D projection. Here was the brown dwarf. This was its track back to the time of impact, and over there, well toward the monitor bank, was Margolia and its sun. At the point of impact.

  “They don’t intersect,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Kalu, run a check, please.” She looked at me and shrugged. These things happen.

  “The display is accurate, Shara.”

  “Can’t be,” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s nowhere near the system.” She checked the ranges. “This is not the one. Closest it got was a decent fraction of a light-year. A twentieth.”

  I became aware of Alex, standing silently at the hatch, listening.

  “Does this mean we got things wrong?” I asked. “Are there two brown dwarfs in the area?”

  “Could be.” She sat down at one of the ops consoles and the 3-D images vanished. “Actually, sixty percent of brown dwarfs travel in pairs.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. The companion is usually within a tenth of a light-year.” She put the scope images on the monitors. Views forward and aft, and off both beams. “It’s not very likely that this thing missed Margolia just as another, unrelated, dwarf took the system apart. So there’s probably—”

  Against the cosmic backdrop off the starboard side, a bloodred star appeared. First magnitude.

  “That it?”

  “I’ll get back to you,” said Shara.

  It was just under a half light-year from our position, and its radial and transverse velocities were almost identical to the brown dwarf.

  “It’s one of your bloodred jobs,” I said.

  “Looks like.” She was tapping keys and watching numbers roll down the screen. Finally, she froze them. We were looking at a set of coordinates. Shara ran the dwarf backward until it intersected with Tinicum. At the point of impact. “That’s your intruder,” she said. “No question.”

  “Okay.” Alex took the chair beside her. “Now we can figure out what happened to Balfour.”

  “Give me a little time,” she said.

  I sent off a report to Windy, then went back to my cabin and tried to read. I was tired, but I just lay there listening to the assorted sounds of the ship. The Spirit was noisier than the Belle Marie. The quarters were more cramped. And it felt more impersonal. I can’t explain that, exactly. Maybe it was the AI. Kalu wasn’t exactly charismatic.

  Eventually I gave up, got a shower, and put on a clean set of clothes. Outside, Shara was in the middle of an explanation. And she looked solemn. Alex was pale. Shara waved in my direction. “—Doesn’t mean it necessarily got swallowed,” she said.

  Alex took a deep breath. “Shara thinks,” he said, “there might have been a collision.”

  “Might,” she said.

  “A direct hit?” I asked. “Balfour?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Look.” Shara leveled her voice. Let’s all keep calm. “We need to check this out more carefully. I need time to put the numbers together. Then we can get a better idea what actually happened.”

  Alex looked at me. “Chase,” he said, “bring Emil up to date. And get us over there.”

  “Over where?”

  “To the intruder.”

  We swung to starboard. The intruder was a distant red glow. We lined up on it, fed the range into Kalu, and belted down.

  “Don’t jump in too close,” Shara cautioned. “We want to give ourselves plenty of space with that thing.”

  I’ve always been a safety-first kind of person. Because of that, and the inaccuracy of the quantum drive, we came out almost three days away. Close enough.

  Again, I was struck by the dwarf’s resemblance to a gas giant. Except that this one was red, with no visible moons and no ring. Its surface churned with tornadoes and cyclones. “That’ll be iron,” Shara said.

  “What will?”

  “The clouds. And silicates and corundum.” Occasionally, when the clouds parted, hot spots that were even brighter became visible. Shara spent time on the instruments while Alex watched anxiously.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Maybe a surprise. Good news: It did not swallow Balfour. But it did have lunch recently.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Alex.

  “Probably Balfour’s moon. This thing passed within a few hundred thousand kilometers of Balfour. And I’d bet it took the moon. Do we know whether Balfour had one?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I’d bet it did.”

  “How do you know?”

  She pointed at lines on the central screen. “Its atmosphere is saturated with silicates.”

  “Which tells us what?”

  “It swallowed a moon. And it happened at about the time of the intersection.”

  Alex took a deep breath. “How can you be sure it wasn’t Balfour?”

  “It wasn’t a planet.” She spun around to face him. “Terrestrial moons are made of the surface scum skimmed off terrestrial worlds by major impacts. Think of Rimway’s structure. An iron core and a silicate mantle. The moon at home is pretty much nothing but iron-poor mantle material.” She indicated the screen. “Take a look at the lines. You can see there’s no iron.”

  I couldn’t see that, and I had no doubt Alex couldn’t. But that was irrelevant. Shara could, and that was all that mattered.

  “So where’s Balfour?”

  She was smiling broadly. “It got close enough to lose its satellite. So at the very least, it’s trailing behind the dwarf.”

  “Can we get pictures?”

  “I’ve been trying to. I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Okay. It’s still early.”

  “Right. And there’s another possibility.”

  “Which is what?”

  Bare minutes later, the second possibility materialized when a blue star appeared from behind the dwarf. “Chase,” Shara said, “Alex. Enjoy the moment. Unless I’ve completely blown it, you’re looking at Balfour.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Use your eyes instead of your brain, and you’ll come to grief every time.

  —Delis Tolbert,

  The Adventures of Omar Paisley, 1417

  “I don’t think there’s any question about it,” said Shara. “That’s your missing planet.”

  We were getting a decent picture on the scope. And we saw immediately that it had oceans! And it was green.

  Alex looked overwhelmed. “It’s a living world,” he said.

  Shara nodded. “Looks like.” And to me: “How close is it to the dwarf?”

  I passed the question to Kalu. “It’s about a million kilometers. Maybe a bit more.”

  She clapped her hands. “Close enough. Who would’ve thought?”

  It was a glorious moment. We danced and yipped and embraced. I got a huge hug from Alex.

  “It’s in tidal lock,” said Kalu. “
Orbital period looks like approximately two point six days.”

  It took a few minutes for us to come back to reality. We broke into the stock cabinet and passed out drinks. We lifted our glasses to Balfour.

  “Brilliant,” said Alex.

  “How do you mean?” I asked. “Who’s brilliant?”

  “The Margolians. Now we know why they moved people to Balfour.”

  “You think they knew in advance this would happen?”

  “Yes.” Shara looked puzzled. “They figured it out. Maybe they weren’t sure. I don’t know what kind of equipment they had with them. But they understood Balfour might come out of it okay.”

  “Why the frown?” asked Alex.

  “Well,” she said, “living conditions on the surface, during the event, and for a considerable time afterward, would have been difficult.”

  “In what way?”

  “During the first few decades after capture by the dwarf, rotational energy would have had to be dissipated.” She ran through a few equations on a notepad. “There would have been lots of earthquakes, tidal waves, typhoons, volcanoes going up. Global warming during the first century. Substantial evaporation. I’m thinking jungle pretty much everywhere.”

  “Again?” I asked.

  “Yes. Warm, wet catastrophes breed jungle.” She shook her head. “They would have had to be desperate to cross to Balfour, and it’s hard to see how they could have survived.”

  I wondered whether I wouldn’t have preferred going down with the original world rather than getting hauled off into the night by a rogue dwarf.

  One side of Balfour, of course, was permanently dark. We trained the scopes on it anyhow and held our breath. I don’t know what we expected, or what Alex was hoping for. But nobody said anything. And, as we expected, no flicker of light appeared anywhere.

  “If there were survivors,” said Shara, “if they’d actually succeeded in establishing a base and keeping it alive, it wouldn’t have been on the back side anyhow. It’ll be too cold there.”

  She turned to the data coming in from the sensors, which were still examining the brown dwarf, noting its mass and gravitation, its rotational period, the distribution of elements in its clouds. Surface temperature was 1500°K. “It’s young,” she said. “Much younger than the other one. They cool off as they age.” She grinned. “Like guys.” The party girl survives in the astrophysicist.

  “How old is it?” I asked.

  “About a hundred million years.”

  “That’s young?”

  “Relatively. Sure.”

  I love the way these people talk.

  Alex had been looking at the pictures of Balfour, paying no attention to the conversation. “We’ll want to go down to the surface and see what we have. What are conditions like on the ground, do you think?”

  Shara started to answer. She said something about picking our spot and it would be comfortable enough, but then we got a blinker and she stopped dead. I switched over to the auxiliary display.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Alex.

  “We’re getting a code white.” I ran a confirmation, to be sure.

  “Out here?” asked Shara. “Who’d be in distress here?”

  “Kalu,” I said, “do we have a visual?”

  “Negative, Chase. I am trying to get a lock now.”

  “Is there a voice signal?” asked Shara.

  “No,” I said. “All we’re getting is the beep.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Alex. “There can’t be anybody in this area.”

  “Somebody’s here,” I said.

  “Chase, I have the coordinates.”

  We were all looking at one another. Everybody had a bad feeling. “Kalu,” I said, “do we have a visual yet?”

  “On-screen.”

  It was a Y-pod. An emergency unit. Something to keep you going until help came. But the hatch was open.

  We enhanced the image.

  “There’s someone in the pilot’s seat,” said Shara.

  Wearing a pressure suit. I opened a channel. “Hello, Lifeboat. What is your condition?”

  I switched over and we listened to a carrier wave.

  Alex leaned close to the mike. “Hello.” He sounded hostile. “Are you able to respond?”

  “Kalu,” I said “where is the thing?”

  “Bearing zero-three-four mark two-seven. Range four hundred twenty-five klicks.”

  “Any sign of a ship?”

  “Yes. I’m getting data now.”

  “Details, please?”

  “Looks like a private yacht. KY designator on the hull. Rest not visible. It appears to be adrift. There’s a power signature, but it’s low.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Take us to the pod, quickest possible route. Everybody belt down.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Alex. “This is a setup. Has to be.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence. But it doesn’t matter. We can’t take a chance and leave him. And we’ve got to get moving. We don’t know how long he’s been out here.”

  Alex nodded. “First we need to take some precautions.”

  “Kalu,” I said, “what’s our ETA?”

  “How much fuel are you willing to expend?”

  “Whatever it takes. Quickest time.”

  “Very good, Chase. I make it thirteen minutes.”

  “What kind of precautions?” asked Shara.

  The man in the pilot’s seat wasn’t moving. It was dark inside and hard to get a good look.

  “We better hustle,” I said, as we slipped alongside. I climbed out of my seat, but Alex asked sharply where I thought I was going.

  “To collect him.”

  “No. Let’s do this the way we decided.”

  “I wasn’t aware you would be the one to go after him.”

  “Sorry I didn’t make myself clear. But this isn’t a job for a woman.”

  Oh, Lord. Here we go again. “Alex, I have more experience in zero gee.”

  “What’s it take to cross ten meters, pull him out, and bring him back?”

  Well, truth was, Alex wouldn’t have to go outside at all. And sure, I could have insisted. I was, after all, the captain. But I couldn’t see that it made much difference. And when his testosterone was flowing, I’d always found it best to indulge him.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s move on.” He glanced over at Shara.

  A few minutes later, in a pressure suit, he was hurrying through the launch bay, which, you will recall, was maintained in vacuum. I turned the lights on for him and, as he approached the cargo doors, I opened them.

  Kalu managed the attitude thrusters and angled us toward the pod until it floated in through the cargo doors. Then we raised the Spirit slightly, and the vehicle settled into a cradle.

  “Good,” said Alex. “Touchdown.”

  I activated magnetic locks to secure it and gave him a little gravity. Alex walked cautiously around to the open hatch, looked in, and found himself confronted by a laser. I saw it the moment he did. “Back off.” A familiar voice crackled out of the speakers. A male. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  Alex froze.

  “Kolpath, I assume you can hear me. If you try anything at all, do anything except follow my instructions completely, I will kill him. Do you understand?”

  It took me a minute to remember. Charlie Everson. The young man with the shuttle reservations.

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t hurt him. I won’t give you any trouble.”

  “Good. That’s smart.”

  Alex found his voice. “What’s this about?” he demanded. “What do you want, Everson?”

  Charlie got out of the pod. “I’m sure you know, Mr. Benedict.” His voice was laced with contempt. “Now turn around and walk straight ahead and don’t reach for anything.”

  Alex started to walk. Charlie kept his laser leveled at Alex’s back. “What’s this all about anyhow?” Alex asked.

  “Just keep going.
”

  Alex started to turn, and Charlie fired his weapon at the deck. Alex froze. Charlie waited a few seconds and turned the beam off. “I scare easily,” he said. “Don’t do anything unless I tell you to first.”

  “Chase,” said Kalu. “Lower deck is punctured.”

  “It’s okay, though,” Charlie continued. “You do what I say, and nobody’s going to get hurt.” He was in a bright yellow pressure suit with no markings, Alex in Survey’s standard forest green. They reached the zero-gee tube, got in together, and came up to the main deck. I heard them enter the airlock and close the hatch. The compression cycle started.

  The inner hatch opened directly out onto the bridge. I turned to face it.

  “Who do you work for?” Alex asked.

  “No need for you to know,” he said.

  “You planted the bomb, didn’t you? You took down the shuttle and killed twenty-three people.”

  “Yeah. I guess I did. Don’t remember the exact number.” His voice was deadly calm. Full of menace. “Kolpath.”

  “What do you want, Charlie?”

  “I want to remind you. No surprises when the door opens. I want you and the other woman standing directly in front of the airlock. With your hands in the air. If you’re not there, I’ll kill him. Do you understand?”

  “What other woman?”

  “Don’t play games with me. You know who I’m talking about. Michaels.”

  “She’s not on board. There’s nobody here but Alex and me.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “What happened to her?”

  The lamp on the hatch was amber. Still pressurizing.

  “She—”

  Alex broke in: “She switched over to the Gonzalez when we stopped at Margolia.”

  “Why’d she do that?” He wasn’t going to buy it.

  “Boyfriend on board,” Alex said. “Dumb bitch. It’s the only reason she came with us.”

  Well, it was better than my story. I was going to claim she got sick at the last minute.

  “You’re lying,” said Charlie.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Not when you’re carrying a laser.”

  He hesitated, unsure what to do next. “Anything happens, anything at all I don’t like, somebody’s dead. You understand, Benedict?”