Polaris

by Jack McDevitt

  Maddy piped in the voice of one of the experts from the Rensilaer: “Any minute now.”

  They woke Mendoza and Dunninger.

  “It’s starting to go,” said Klassner. “What you’ll see first is a general collapse.” Moments later, that character-switch came over him, and he was someone else. He looked first puzzled, then sleepy. Boland watched his eyelids sag. Within minutes, Klassner was asleep.

  What they saw first was a bright white light that blew all the pictures off the monitors. Somebody inhaled, but no one spoke. Mendoza, seated beside Klassner, looked toward Boland, and their eyes locked. Boland knew Mendoza well. They’d been friends a long time, but something deeper passed between them in that moment, as if they were comrades standing on a dark shore.

  They jumped out past the orbit of the fifth planet, to a prearranged location, where they rejoined the other ships. Klassner woke during the jump and looked devastated when they told him it was over. “You slept through it, Marty,” said Mendoza. “We tried to wake you, but you were seriously out.”

  “It’s okay,” White told him. “You’ll get another chance.” From this range, the explosion hadn’t occurred yet, was still forty minutes away, and the researchers were able to set up and wait for the event to happen again. Klassner swallowed his disappointment, and commented that his daughter wouldn’t be a bit surprised when he told her what had happened. Boland understood that Klassner had no children.

  From their present range, Delta Karpis would normally have been a relatively small disk. But the disk was gone, replaced by a yellow smear twisted into the shape of a pear.

  Nancy White was sitting with a notebook, recording her impressions, as if she would one day publish them. Her reputation had come from creating and moderating a series of shows, Nancy White’s Fireside Chats, in which she talked science and philosophy with her audience; and Time-Out, a panel discussion that allowed her to sit each week with simulated historical figures ranging from Hammurabi to Adrian Cutter to Myra Kildare to discuss the issues of the day. The show had never been enormously popular, but—as the producers liked to say—the people who counted loved it.

  Urquhart talked quietly with Mendoza. Dunninger had opened a book but wasn’t really paying any attention to it.

  They counted down, and it all happened again. Except at this range it was less painful to watch. The pear buckled, and the light coming through the viewports alternately brightened and darkened. And finally subsided into a hostile red glow.

  It was odd, living through an event twice. But that was what FTL did for you. When you could outrun light, you could travel in time.

  Within two hours, Delta Karpis was gone, and the light in the solar system had gone out. Only a blaze of luminous gas, and the bright golden ring around the dwarf, remained. They watched while the neutron star proceeded quietly on its way.

  II.

  Rondel (Rondo) Karpik was chief of the communications watch at Indigo Station, near the outer limits of Confederate space. His title, chief, was largely nominal since, except during major operations, he was the only person on the watch. The Delta Kay mission had ceased to be a major operation. Sensor packages had been laid at strategic points, data from the three ships had been relayed and stored, the on-station experts had expressed their admiration for the efficiency with which the researchers had carried out their assigned tasks, but they were predicting it would be months before we knew what we’d learned. There had been a journalist with the Sentinel, reporting to a pool. The pool had filed stories that went on about the majesty of it all until Rondo thought he was going to throw up. Then the fleet had announced its homebound schedule, and the experts and journalists had retired down to Cappy’s gumpo shop, and he hadn’t seen them since.

  There was still some tracking data coming in, and a few other odds and ends, but the excitement was clearly over. Well, he had to admit he’d never seen a star blow up before, at least not from close by.

  “Indigo, we’re ready to make our jump.” Bill Trask’s image gazed at him from the center of the room. Bill was captain of the Rensilaer and, in Rondo’s view, the biggest horse’s ass among the assorted skippers who passed through Indigo. He had no time for peasants, and he let you know exactly how you rated. He was big, ponderous, with white hair and a deep, gravelly voice, and everybody was afraid of him. At least all the communications people. “We estimate timely arrival Indigo. Keep the stewpots warm.”

  The message had been sent fifteen hours earlier. Trask signed off, and his image vanished.

  Rondo opened a channel but kept it audio only. “Acknowledge, Rensilaer,” he said. “We’ll be looking for you.”

  All three ships would, of course, stop there before proceeding to Rimway. Indigo was a cylinder world, orbiting Planter’s Delight, which had been settled less than thirty years before and already boasted 17 million inhabitants. Indigo had almost half a million more.

  The past few days had been historic, but it was hard to get excited. He was up for a department manager’s job, and that was all he cared about at the moment. Events like this were a hazard. They were no-win situations. Handle them right, and nobody would notice. Screw up somewhere, say the wrong thing to one of the journalists, and it would be bye-bye baby. So he concentrated on maintaining a professional attitude. Keep the experts happy. And make sure the assorted hyperlight transmissions were received in good order, made available, and relayed to Rimway. It was simple enough. All he really had to do was to let the AI handle the details, be on his best social behavior, say good things about everybody, and keep close in case of a problem.

  He watched the Rensilaer’s status lights, and when they went blue, he informed operations that the ship had made its jump, and he gave them its ETA.

  Ten minutes later, the Sentinel’s captain appeared, Eddie Korby, young, quiet, studious. Look at him and you thought he was timid. The last person in the world you’d think would be piloting a starship. But he always had an attractive woman on his arm. Sometimes two or three.

  “Indigo,” he said, “we’ll be departing in four minutes. I hope you got to watch the show. Delta Kay literally imploded. The passengers seem pretty happy with the mission. See you in a couple of weeks. Sentinel out.”

  Next up was Maddy. “Coming home, Rondo,” she said. “Departure imminent.” Behind her, on his operational screen, the dying star gave her an aura. She looked positively supernatural, standing there, silhouetted against the conflagration. A first-class babe, she was. But there was something about her that warned him don’t touch. “Polaris out.”

  He took another sip of his gumpo, which was an extract from a plant grown on the world below, and to which he’d long since become accustomed. Lemon with a sting, but when it settled, it provided a general sense of warmth and well-being.

  Sentinel’s status lamps went blue. On her way.

  He passed it on, not that anyone in Ops really cared, but it was procedure. He checked the logbook, made the entry for the Sentinel, and waited for Polaris’s lights to change.

  The lamps showed white when the ship was in linear space, and they would go to blue when she’d made her jump. Twenty minutes after Maddy said they were ready to leave, they were still white.

  That shouldn’t be. “Jack,” he told the AI, “run a diagnostic on the board. Let’s make sure the problem’s not at this end.”

  The systems whispered to one another, status lamps winked on and off, turned yellow, turned green, went back to white. “I do not detect any problem with the system, Rondo,” said Jack.

  Damn. He disliked complications. He waited another few minutes, but the lamp remained steadily, defiantly, unchanged.

  White.

  He hated problems. Absolutely hated them. There was always a big hassle, and it usually turned out that somebody had fallen asleep. Or hadn’t thrown a switch. Reluctantly, he informed operations.

  “Polaris twenty-five minutes after scheduled jump. Unaccounted for.”

  Rondo’s supervisor, Charlie Weth
erall, showed up a few minutes later. Then one of the techs, who’d heard what was happening. The tech ran tests, and said the problem was at the other end. At forty-five minutes, the first journalists arrived. Heard something was happening. What’s wrong?

  Rondo kept quiet and let Charlie do the talking. “These things happen,” Charlie said. “Communications breakdowns.” Sure they do.

  What Rondo couldn’t figure was why they hadn’t heard from Maddy if she’d been unable to jump.

  “Busted link,” said Charlie, helpfully, using his expression to suggest that Rondo not say anything alarming to the journalists. Or to anyone at all.

  “Then you don’t think they’re in trouble?” one of them asked. Her name was Shalia Something-or-other. She was a dark-skinned woman who’d sulked for weeks because they hadn’t made room for her on the mission.

  “Hell, Shalia,” said Charlie, “for the moment we just have to wait until we have more information. But no, there’s nothing to be worried about.”

  He ushered the journalists into a conference room and found someone to stay with them, talk to them, keep them happy. He promised to let them know as soon as the station heard from the Polaris.

  Charlie was small and round. He had a short temper when people made mistakes that impacted on him, and he was obviously thinking that Maddy had screwed up somehow, and he was getting irritated with her. Better with her, Rondo thought, than with me. Back in the comm center, they replayed the Polaris transmission. It was audio only. “Coming home, Rondo. Departure imminent. Polaris out.”

  “Doesn’t tell us much,” said Charlie. “What’s imminent mean?”

  “Not an hour.”

  “Okay. I’m going to check with upstairs. Stand by.”

  Ten minutes later he was back with the station’s director of operations. By then there was a crowd, and the journalists, who had broken out of their holding cell, were back. The director promised to make a statement as soon as he had something, and assured everyone it was just a technical glitch.

  They played Maddy’s transmission over and over. The director confessed he had no idea what the situation might be and asked Charlie whether anything like this had happened before. It had not.

  “Give it another hour,” the director said. “If nothing changes by”—he consulted the time—“by five, we’ll send somebody in. Can we turn one of the other two ships around?”

  Charlie consulted his display. “Negative,” he said. “Neither has enough fuel to make a U-turn.”

  “Who else is out there?”

  “Nobody who’s close.”

  “Okay. Who’s not close?”

  Rondo tapped the screen to show his boss. “Looks like Miguel,” said Charlie.

  Miguel Alvarez was the captain of the Rikard Peronovski. Carrying supplies to Makumba and running some sort of AI tests.

  “How long’ll it take him to get there?”

  While Charlie watched, Rondo ran the numbers. “Four days after he reorients and is able to jump. Add time for the request to reach him, and for maneuvering at Delta Kay, figure a week. No less than that.”

  “Okay. If we don’t hear by five, tell him to go find the Polaris. Tell him to expedite.” The director shook his head. “It’s a bitch. Whatever we do here, we’re going to have some very unhappy people. What’s the captain’s name again, Charlie?”

  “Miguel.”

  “No. On the Polaris.”

  “It’s Maddy. Madeleine English.”

  “We ever have trouble with her before?”

  “Not that I know of.” He looked at Rondo, who shook his head. No. Never any trouble.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, when this is over she better have a good story, or we’re going to have her license.”

  Rondo turned the comm center over to his relief and retired to his quarters. He showered and changed and went down to the Golden Bat, where he had dinner, as he customarily did, with friends. He started to describe what had happened, but word had already gotten around.

  He was midway through a roast chicken when Talia Corbett, an AI specialist, showed up and told them that nothing had changed, they had not yet heard anything from the Polaris. The call had gone out to the Peronovski. Miguel was riding to the rescue.

  There was a lot of talk that there must have been a major comm malfunction because nothing else could explain what was happening. Other than a catastrophic event. When you say catastrophic event in a situation like that, you tend to get a lot of attention.

  He’d been trying to coax Talia into his bed for the better part of a year. That night he broke through. Afterward, he concluded that the business with the Polaris had, in some way, been responsible. It’s an ill wind . . . he thought. Meantime, the Polaris lamps remained white.

  III.

  Delta Kay’s surviving worlds and moons were scattering. A great ring of light marked the progress of the dwarf star. Near the position from which the Polaris had sent its last transmission, a set of lights blinked on, and the iron gray bulk of the Rikard Peronovski appeared apparently from nowhere.

  Miguel Alvarez, who usually rode alone in the big freighter, was glad to have a passenger along this time. If the Polaris was really in trouble, another hand would be helpful.

  He knew Madeleine. Not well, but well enough to know she was no dummy. It had been almost six days since Maddy’s last transmission, and there’d been no word from the ship since. A communication problem, no doubt. Had to be. He did not expect to find anything in the area, because Maddy was undoubtedly in Armstrong space, her comm systems down, but headed home. If that was the case, she would arrive back at Indigo in another ten days or so.

  The Peronovski was transporting general supplies, food, spare parts, environmental gear, and assorted odds and ends to the newly established colony at Makumba. Survey had elected to use the opportunity to test Mariner, which was, as his passenger insisted on calling it, a deep-space intelligence and docking system. The passenger was Shawn Walker, an AI specialist.

  Miguel had expected to be overtaken en route by a second message, It’s okay, we’ve heard from them, continue your scheduled flight. But Indigo’s hourly updates, Nothing yet, Still no word, simply confirmed his suspicion that the ship was homeward bound, hidden in the folds of Armstrong space. He imagined Maddy’s frustration, aware that they’d be scrambling to find her but unable to communicate with anyone.

  Walker was on the bridge with him when they arrived. Miguel wasn’t sure what he expected to see. His instruments told him that vast clouds of gas were out there, but nothing was visible other than the ring of light around the neutron star.

  Shawn Walker was about forty, average height, a bit overweight. He didn’t look particularly smart, and maybe he wasn’t. He was one of these guys who knew his way around AIs, and didn’t seem to care much about anything else in the world. When they sat and talked at meals, it was all shop. Walker was married, and Miguel wondered if he was like that at home.

  He turned toward the last-known position of the Polaris, accelerated, and began scanning for the ship he didn’t expect to find. Miguel sent off a message to Indigo, bringing them up to date. Then he asked Sebastian, Shawn’s experimental AI, when they could expect to locate the lost vessel.

  “If it is in the area,” Sebastian said, “and if it maintained course and speed, as one would expect, we should see it within a few hours.”

  “What happens,” Shawn asked Miguel, “if they’re not there?”

  “We’ll look elsewhere.”

  “No. I mean, what happens if they’re on their way back to Indigo?”

  “I guess,” Miguel said, “we’ll be stuck here until Indigo tells us they’ve shown up.” Walker looked distressed. “You okay, Shawn?”

  “I know Warren. Mendoza. He was on board. He’s an old friend.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be all right.”

  “And Tom Dunninger, too. Not well, but I met him.”

  They had dinner, played cards, watched a video, went back t
o the bridge, and looked out at the relentless sky.

  Miguel didn’t sleep well. He wasn’t sure why. He’d done a rescue mission once before, bailing out a ship whose engines had exploded. That had been the Borealis. Ten years ago. They’d been lucky: The captain had eleven people on board, and ten had survived. They’d given him a citation for that, and the rescued passengers had thrown a party for him. It had been one of the great moments of his life.

  But there was something different about this. He wasn’t sure what was bothering him, but his instincts kept him from closing his eyes. Kept him from relaxing at all.

  In the morning there was still no sign. He had an early breakfast, then an hour later sat drinking coffee while Shawn ate. Sebastian was still reporting empty skies.

  He prowled through the ship. He wandered from the common room to the bridge, took the zero-gee tube down to the cargo hold, glanced toward the two additional cabins they maintained just off the main storage bins, and inspected the Makumba shipment, which they were supposed to deliver in a couple of days. Eventually he climbed into the shuttle and took a seat. Shawn came down and asked if he was okay.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m just not anxious to spend the next two weeks here.”

  “Miguel.” It was Sebastian. “We have searched the entire area in which they should be. The Polaris is not there.”

  “So they jumped?”

  “Or changed course. Or accelerated.”

  Miguel had no doubt the Polaris was on its way home. “Okay,” he said, “if we have to hang around, let’s do it right. Sebastian, expand the search. Let’s assume they got blown off course by the event. We’ll look deeper. Away from wherever the central luminary used to be.

  “Waste of time and money,” he grumbled. “But we’ll do it by the book.”

  Miguel was becoming annoyed with Maddy. It would have been thoughtful of her to leave a satellite at the place where the ship should have been, informing any potential rescuer that she was okay and on her way to Indigo. It would have saved all this hassle.