“I think everyone on the expedition knew what he was up to, but still it took him forever to get around to it. Well, in truth, he never did get around to it. He was trying to act so professional when really all he was doing was procrastinating. We had been out for about a month when I finally got tired of waiting. I asked him to go for a bite once our watch was over, and as soon as we were alone in the lift I took things into my own hands, so to speak. Then he had to make a decision. He had to either run away or come along for the ride, and he wasn’t going to run. All I can say is that it was a good thing I had enough rank to stop the lift in mid-transit or some of the crew might have gotten an eyeful when the doors opened. And we were a couple from then on.
“We were married a few months after the mission was done. He sold his condominium in the clouds on D’mirnoch and moved here to be with me. Not that his place was in any way undesirable, mind you; but the land here in the forest has been in my family for generations, for thousands of years, and I certainly wasn’t going to give that up. And we were happy, deliriously so, until it was time to ship out again. After that we never had much time to spend together. The corps tried to be accommodating, but there was only so much they could do. We always managed to find a few weeks out of the year to spend together here, but otherwise it was catch as catch can. We would see each other for a few days in one spot and then for a few days somewhere else. But it was always the same. Just about the time we were getting comfortable with each other again, it would be time to say goodbye.
“But it hardly seemed so important then. I always thought we had plenty of time. He was barely seventy years my senior; we should have had centuries together. But then there was his last mission. He was aboard the Pathfinder, a brand new ship on her maiden cruise. No one knows what happened. There were several ships assigned to the squadron, all of them leapfrogging as usual, but when it was the Pathfinder’s turn to deep drive, she didn’t reappear where she was supposed to. The other vessels searched for days but could find no trace of her. No distress calls, no drones; as I said, nothing at all. That was nearly six years ago now. I can’t believe it’s been that long.” The captain halted her narrative and sat motionless, still staring out into the dark, lost in her private reverie.
Suddenly she looked directly at O’Keefe, her vulnerability vanishing. The habitual veil of sternness with which she usually cloaked her countenance closed over her face like a hastily drawn theater curtain. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said as if irritated. “What do you care of my life and my troubles? I shouldn’t be whining and going on like some forty-year old girl prattling on about her first love.”
Ordinarily, what she had said about O’Keefe would have been true. For the large majority of his life O’Keefe had not cared enough about anyone to be even infinitesimally interested in hearing about any of their problems. Since the war, his paralysis, and the death of his parents, he had never had much more to lose, at least from an emotional standpoint, so the problems of other people seemed to him to be merely trifling and silly. Any development of empathy for others beyond which he had possessed as a child had been completely arrested. It was in fact quite possible that his capacities in that regard had suffered erosion over the years. He could not be sure; his memory was not dependable enough in such matters. But one thing was certain, his empathic abilities were much like his conscience; neither had gotten a whole lot of exercise for a very long time. But for reasons he could not now fathom, the captain’s tale had put a distinct and heavy ache in the pit of his heart. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar; it was feeling it on someone else’s behalf that was a new sensation. That must have been evident on his face because now she looked at him as if she were the one who should be ashamed. She looked away and fiddled with the sash of her robe, studied the floor for a few moments, and refilled her glass with emerdal. At last she settled back into the chair and spoke again.
“What about you?” she asked. “Is there anyone you care about, someone that we took you from?”
O’Keefe was momentarily stunned. His jaw fell agape at the thought of anyone asking such a foolish question before it dawned on him that she saw him as youthful and whole, not past middle aged and crippled.
“No,” he finally said. “I mean, I thought I was in love a couple of times as a kid, but after I was wounded I didn’t get out much or meet many people,” and besides, nobody ever gave a good god-damn about me when I was stuck in that chair, his mind screamed. “Things just never worked out.”
“I’m sorry,” the captain said, and O’Keefe believed she truly was.
He uncharacteristically spoke up, starting the conversation anew. He knew he should have let it go, but he suddenly experienced an overwhelming desire to know more about the fate of Kebler Nelsik. “What do you think could have happened,” he asked tentatively, “to the Pathfinder I mean.”
She glanced at him sharply, as if surprised or even upset by the question. Nevertheless, she was soon rambling on again, the emerdal evidently loosing a need for loquaciousness within her, much as it had for O’Keefe.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been over it a thousand times and nothing makes any sense. There have been many occasions where malfunctions or human error have caused cartography ships to overshoot their assigned coordinates, and generally nothing happens. The crews wipe their brows, count their blessings, and go on about their work, albeit considerably more carefully. And there have also been more tragic consequences. Some few crews have gone off into uncharted space and had collisions so violent that all they left behind was some space dust and an energy signature. Others have hit smaller objects and left a swath of wreckage light years long. But the Pathfinder left no trace at all; at least none that was ever found, despite an extensive search.
“I suppose it is conceivable that there could have been some malfunction that drove them so far out into uncharted space that any evidence of their fate was beyond the search parameters, but it hardly seems likely, or even possible for that matter.
“Or, they may have, for reasons unknown, gone off on another vector after they went sub-light at the wrong coordinates and met their fate in an area that there was no cause to search. But that doesn’t make any sense. There would have been no reason for them to do that when they could have merely retraced their path, finding their way to safety through the same space they had just traversed.
“They may have had deep drive problems or other damage so severe that they had to set the ship down somewhere for repairs that ultimately could not be made, and they’re out there, stranded on another world, waiting for rescue. But they would have sent a drone, all of their drones by this time, to tell us where they are.
“That is what is so mysterious about their disappearance. Any accident cataclysmic enough to destroy the ship would have left evidence behind so substantial that it could not have been missed. A Trailblazer class cartography vessel is not by any stretch of the imagination a large ship, but they still have an extensive engineering plant and a deep drive. Even if the vessel had been completely vaporized, the explosion of a starship of any size is a cosmic event on a scale that should be readily detectable with no search at all. So there you have it. It is hard to envision a scenario where the ship was either destroyed far enough away to remain undetected, or one where it was disabled in a way that both kept it from returning home and rendered it unable to send for aid.
“I know from a rational standpoint that I’m being foolish, but the only possibility that I can’t rule out is a mutiny. That has never happened in the Corps, so on the surface it seems out of the question. It could be just my mind’s refusal to accept the loss of Kebler, I don’t know. Maybe I’m searching in vain for some sequence of events that would have the end result of allowing him to survive, but even when I try to look at it as objectively as possible I can’t bring myself to think so. I’ve done some research on the subject. With the exception of those ships lost in areas that the Vazileks have penetrated, no governme
nt owned ship, or for that matter any starship, has been lost without a trace or a distress signal for at least five thousand years. Such a circumstance may never have occurred, but five millennia was as far back as I looked.
“So I can’t help but think that maybe he is still out there. I think the reason no one has been able to uncover any trace of them is because the mutineers who took the ship do not want to be found. I think some small group of people on board took the Pathfinder and hijacked it for their own purposes. And maybe, just maybe, the crew is not dead but is being held captive somewhere. I know that it is a thin hope, but mutiny, flight, and deliberate evasion is the only concatenation of assumptions I can come up with that fits the facts, or I guess I should say the lack of them. That ship wasn’t lost; someone stole it. That’s why I volunteered and took a commission in the police force. If criminals have that ship, I want to be in on finding them.” She leaned farther back in her chair and looked unseeing out into the forest, biting her lower lip.
O’Keefe did not have the heart to state the obvious. If there had been mutineers aboard the Pathfinder, and if they had wanted to disappear and have no one ever learn of what they had done, the first thing on their agenda would have been to kill any witnesses. So he kept his thoughts to himself and was cautiously vague when he spoke again.
“Stranger things have happened,” he said, and it was not a lie. In any disaster, there almost always seemed to be someone who, against all odds, somehow survived. O’Keefe was too cynical to believe that was the case in this instance, but still it wasn’t a lie. That wasn’t much to credit himself with, but it made him feel a bit better about his morbid curiosity.
The captain continued to gaze out into the darkness for some time before speaking again. But when she did, she seemed almost excited. “What about you?” she asked. “You’re in much the same situation as what I’ve been theorizing. No one on Earth knows where you’ve gone. I’m sure your family is agonizing over your puzzling disappearance just as I have been over Kebler’s. How do you feel about that? Are you driven to let them know that you yet live, that you might see them again someday? You must know that if you do not remain here you will die in only a few years. You can’t really want to go back, despite what you have told me. But that aside, would you feel it necessary to contact your home again, just to have some small connection with your loved ones?” The captain sounded hopeful, as if his reactions would be analogous to her husband’s, but O’Keefe had nothing in him to justify her reasoning.
“When I said there was no one to care about back home, I meant no one at all. I don’t have any family,” he said. “Except the dogs. And they are almost certainly passed on by now, either killed in the explosion that got me, or starved, or something.” A pang of loss struck him, and he unconsciously lowered his chin to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” the captain said again, and this time O’Keefe was certain she meant it. Now it was his turn to look away; as he squeezed an inchoate tear from each eye with his thumb and forefinger, wiping them off on the bridge of his nose as inconspicuously as possible. The tears weren’t just for Bizzy and Ajay, but for what their passing reminded him of—the too many deaths that he had already been witness to.
Get a hold of yourself, he thought. He pulled the rue from his face and pushed his anguish back into the dark corners of his mind, back to those places he rarely visited.
“And about going back home,” he said, once he was sure his voice would not falter, “I’m not sure what I think about that. But what I told you before is the absolute truth. If it is the only alternative to staying here and being treated like a troglodyte criminal for the next eight or nine hundred years, then home looks pretty good from where I’m sitting.”
There was another short period of uncomfortable silence between them before the captain spoke again. “You’re really not what I would have expected an aberrant to be,” she said softly. “I mean, before I took Vigilant to Earth.”
“Thank you, I think,” O’Keefe said, unsure of how to take the remark. It was as if the haughty woman thought it would be complimentary to him if she were only slightly less condescending than she had been in the past.
But he let the remark pass with no further comment, and instead of searching for some kind of retort he reflected solemnly on the captain’s mention of home. Surely his hastily drawn plan to return to Earth with a literal fountain of youth was in reality nothing more than a pipe dream. He had declared his intentions to himself in a fit of anger, and now that the pique had passed he was no longer sure of what he wanted, much less what he could actually accomplish. He was only one man, one man who was but a prisoner. He would be fortunate in the extreme to escape confinement if the Akadeans were adamant in wanting to hold him. It now seemed incredibly naïve to have believed that he was in any way capable of absconding with important aspects of their technology and somehow making his way back to Earth as well.
In addition, when he thought about it, it astonished him how quickly the largest part of his adult life had become a thing of the past. A few short months ago he had been a hostage to unending depression, a impotent cripple chained to rolling chairs; while now he was relaxing on another world, a drink in his hand, his legs restored, and youthful vigor revived in the whole of his body. Where before he had been on a single path of hardship that led only to an unheralded end, now myriad trails branched out before him, many of them leading toward undreamt of and extraordinary destinies. His situation could change again very quickly, many times over, and in the long run anything might be possible. It would almost certainly do him no good to at this point tether himself to one particular objective without regard to other options that might beckon to him without warning. Roll with the punches, he thought. Eventually opportunity will come knocking.
Suddenly he became aware of a potent and peppery aroma assaulting his nostrils. It was the chow Seldon had promised. He wrenched his neck around to peer over his shoulder and saw one of the house robots approaching from across the room. It carried two collapsible tables in its mechanical arms and towed a large tray of steaming food.
O’Keefe rose, crossed the floor to the automaton, and took one of the tables from its metallic grasp. After a quick perusal revealed the secret of how it unfolded and latched, he opened it and set it before his chair while the robot placed the other in front of the captain. Meanwhile, the serving tray hung suspended in the air where the robot has positioned it. As O’Keefe watched, three sturdy legs descended from beneath it, forming a trivet, and whatever power that served to hold the tray aloft receded. Its newly extended feet settled gently to the floor, all three of them making contact with the hardwood at exactly the same instant.
O’Keefe circled back round his chair to survey the food. The lone platter on the tray held a seasoned meat dish, with the meat rolled in what appeared to be genuine tortillas and covered liberally with cheese and brown sauce. It looked for all the world to be a platter of genuine beef enchiladas. There was also a large ceramic tureen filled with a rice concoction and another bowl holding a thick soup brimming with vegetables. The fiery scent of jalapenos floated up with the steam from the latter. A large flagon of liquid rested in one corner of the trencher, next to a bowl of ice. China, crystal, and utensils were arranged neatly along one edge. The captain sidled up next to him and studied the repast as well.
“What’s in the pitcher?” he asked.
“Cold tea. Seldon is well aware that, unless I specify otherwise, I always take tea with dinner in lieu of wine or a drink.”
“Iced tea? As in sweetened iced tea?” O’Keefe asked, arching a brow expectantly.
“Of course,” the captain answered without hesitation.
“With real sugar?”
“Yes.” She regarded O’Keefe patiently but quizzically.
“Ah,” he purred. “My respect for your civilization grows by leaps and bounds.” He reached for the ewer, ignoring the captain’s look of befuddlement, and poured some of the brownish nectar int
o a tall glass, being careful to leave enough room at the top to add what he considered to be exactly the right amount of ice. Raising it to his lips, he took a long, leisurely sip. He was surprised to find that even lemon had been added in what tasted like precisely the right proportion. “Oh, goodness,” he said, almost whispering. “That is what I call a grade-A glass of tea. Was this on Vigilant and no one told me?”
“Well, yes and no,” the captain answered, smiling slightly and obviously amused. “There’s always tea on board, of course. But not exactly like this. The food synthesizers are good at a lot of things, but I’ve never been aboard a ship, particularly a police vessel, that could produce a reasonable facsimile of fresh brewed tea. I think a lot of it has to do with the fleet’s rendition of lemon juice. Besides the fact that it is indeed sour, it has very little in common with the real thing.” She stood and watched him savor the taste in tiny sips for several seconds. “Well?” she finally asked, “you’re the guest. Are you going to fill your plate, or did you expect me to serve you?”
“No, I was just waiting for you. Ladies first, and all that.”
The captain looked at him with complete incomprehension. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“OK, I take it you don’t do that here,” O’Keefe said as he reached for a plate. “Since you had sweet tea I must’ve gotten carried away. I was almost ready to believe that civility was a part of your culture. I’m sure now that I was mistaken.” He had spoken with utter facetiousness, and had been grinning the whole time, but the captain looked at him as if she were biting back gall. He sighed and turned his attention to loading generous portions of food atop his plate, already well aware that he should have not have attempted light banter with someone as severe and uncompromising as the captain. It seemed unlikely that the two of them would make it through their first dinner alone together without the onset of another argument. He took his food and seated himself without another look at the woman.
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