The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  As the first clicks and clanks of cooling resound through the shell, she hangs up her suit, opens her small-size sleep chest, gets in, and injects herself. Her feelings as she pulls the lid down are those of a child of antique Earth as it falls asleep to awake on Christmas morning. Thank the All for cold-sleep, she thinks drowsily. It gave us the stars. Imagine those first brave explorers who had to live and age, to stay awake through all the days, the months, the years.…

  * * *

  She wakens in what at first glance appears to be about the same starfield, but when she’s closed the chest, rubbing her behind where the antisleep injections hit she sees that the Rift looks different.

  It’s larger, and—why, it’s all around the ship! Tendrils of dark almost close behind her. She’s in one of the fringy star-clumps that stick out into the Rift. And the starfield looks dull, apart from a few blazing suns—of course, there aren’t any nearby stars! Or rather, there are a few very near, and then an emptiness where all the middle-distance suns should be. Only the far, faint star-tapestry lies beyond.

  The ship is full of noise; as she comes fully awake she understands that the beacon signal and her mass-proximity indicator are both tweeting and blasting away. She tunes them down, locates the beacon, and puts the ship into a slow orbit around it. This becon, like FedBase, is set on a big asteriod that gives her just enough g’s to stabilize.

  Very well. If she’s going to Ace’s Landing, she’ll just set in the coordinates for Beacon 900-Two AL, and go back to sleep. But if she’s going to look at those yellow suns, she must get out her charts and work up a safe two- or three-leg course to one of them.

  She can’t simply set in their coordinates and fly straight there, even if there were no bodies actually in the way, because the ‘skip drive is built to turn off and wake her up if she threatens to get too deep in a strong gravity field, or encounters an asteroid swarm or some other space hazard. So she has to work out corridors that pass really far away from any strong bodies or known problems.

  Decide.… But, face it, hasn’t she already decided, when she stabilized here? She doesn’t need that much time to punch in Beacon Two!… Yes. She has to go somewhere really wild. A hunt on Ace’s Landing is just not what she came out here for. Those unknown yellow suns are.… And maybe she could do something useful, like finding the missing men; there’s an off chance. The neat thing to do might be to go by small steps, Ace’s Landing first—but the really neat course is to take advantage of all she’s learned and not to risk being forbidden to come back. Green, go!

  She’s been busy all this while, threading cassettes and getting them lined up for those GO suns. As Charts had warned her, edges don’t fit well. She’s working at forcing two holos into a cheap frame made for one, when her mass-proximity tweeter goes off.

  She glances up, ready to duck or deflect a sky-rock. Amazed, she sees something unmistakably artificial ahead. A ship? It grows larger—but not large enough, not at the rate it’s coming. It’ll pass her clean. Whatever can it be? Visions of the mythical tiny ship full of tiny aliens jump to her mind.

  It’s so small—why, she could pick it up! Without really thinking, she spins CC-One’s attitude and comes parallel, alongside the object. She’s good at tricky little accelerations. The thing seems to put on speed as she idles up. Touched by chase fever, she mutters, “Oh, no, you don’t!” and extrudes the rather inadequate manipulator arm.

  As she does so, she realizes what it is. But she’s too excited to think, she plucks it neatly out of space, and after a bit of trying, twists it into her cargo lock, shuts the port behind it, and refills with air.

  She’s caught herself a message pipe! Bound from the gods know where to FedBase. It was changing course at Beacon One, like herself, hence moving slowly. Has she committed an official wrong? Is there some penalty for interfering with official commo?

  Well, she’s put her spoon in the soup, she might as well drink it. It’ll take awhile for the pipe to warm to touchability. So she goes on working her charts, intending merely to take a peek at the message and then send the little thing on its way. Surely such a small pause won’t harm anything—pipes are used because the sender’s out of range, not because they’re fast.

  She hasn’t a doubt she can start it going, again. She’s seen that it’s covered with instructions. Like all Federation space gear, it’s fixed to be usable by amateurs in an emergency.

  Impatiently she completes a chart and goes to fish the thing out of the port while it’s still so cold she has to put on gloves. When she undogs its little hatch, a cloud of golden motes drifts out, distracting her so that she brushes her bare wrist against the metal when she reaches for the cassette inside. Ouch!

  She glances at her arm, hoping she hasn’t given herself a nasty cold-burn. Nothing to be seen but an odd dusty scratch. No redness. But she can feel the nerve twitch deep in her forearm. Funny! She brushes at it, and takes out the cassette with more care. It’s standard record; she soon has it threaded in her voder.

  The voice that speaks is so thick and blurry that she backs up and restarts, to hear better.

  “Supply and Recon Team Number 914 B-K reporting,” she makes out. Excitedly she recognizes the designation. Why, that’s the missing ship! This is important. She should relay it to Base at once. But surely it won’t hurt to listen to the rest?

  The voice is saying that a new depot has been established at thirty-twenty north, forty-two-twenty-eight west, RD Thirty. That’s one of the yellow suns’ planets, and the coordinates Coati has on her wrist. “Ninety-five percent terraform.” The voice has cleared a little.

  It goes on to say that they will work back to FedBase, stopping to check a highly terraform planet they’ve spotted at eighteen-ten north, twenty-eight-thirty west, RD Thirty, in the same group of suns. “But—uh—” The voice stops, then resumes.

  “Some things happened at thirty-twenty. There’re people there. I guess we have to report a, uh, First Contact. They—”

  A second voice interrupts abruptly.

  “We did just like the manual! The manual for First Contacts.”

  “Yeah,” resumes the first voice. “It worked fine. They even had a few words from Galactic, and the signals. But they—”

  “The wreck. The wreck! Tell them,” says the other voice.

  “Oh. Well, yeah. There’s a wreck there, an old RB. Real old. You can’t see the rescue flag; it has big stuff growing on it. We think it’s Ponz. So maybe it’s his First Contact.” The voice sounds unmistakably downcast. “Boss can decide.… Anyway, they have some kind of treatment they give you, like a pill to make you smart. It takes two days; you sleep a lot. Then they let you out and you can understand everything. I mean—everything! It was—we never had anything like that before. Everybody talking and understanding everybody! See how we can talk now? But it’s funny.… Anyway, they helped us find a place with a level site, and we fixed up a fuel dump really nice. We—”

  “What they looked like!” the other voice butts in. “Never mind us. Tell about them, what they looked like and how they did.”

  “Oh, sure. Well. Big white bodies with fur all over. And six legs—they mostly walk on the back four; the top two are like arms. They have like long bodies, long white cats, big; when they rear up to look, they’re over our heads. And they have.…” Here the voice stammers, as if finding it hard to speak. “They have like two, uh, private parts. Two sets, I mean. Some of them. And their faces”—the voice runs on, relieved—“their faces are fierce. Some teeth! When they came and looked in first, we were pretty nervous. And big eyes, sort of like mixed-up people and animals. Cats. But they acted friendly, they gave back the signals, so we came out. That was when they grabbed us and pushed their heads onto ours. Then they let us go, and acted like something was wrong. I heard one say, ‘Ponz,’ and like ‘Lashley’ or ‘Leslie.’”

  “Leslie was with Ponz, I told you,” says the second.

  “Yeah. So then they grabbed us again, and held on,
and that was when they gave the treatment. I think something went into me, I can still hear like a voice. Ko says, him, too.… Oh, and there were young ones and some others running around on an island; they said they’re not like them until they get the treatment. ‘Drons,’ they called the young ones. And afterward they’re ‘Ee-ah-drons.’ The ones we talked to. It’s sort of confusing. Like the Ee-ah are people, too. But you don’t see them.” His voice—it must be Boney—runs down. “Is that all?” Coati hears him ask aside.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” the other voice—Ko—replies. “We better get started, we got one more stop … and I don’t feel so good anymore. I wish we was home.”

  “Me, too. Funny, we felt so great. Well, DRS 914 B-K signing off.… I guess this is the longest record we ever sent, huh? Oh, we have some corrections to send. Stand by.”

  After a long drone of coordinate corrections, the record ends.

  Coati sits pensive, trying to sort out the account. It’s clear that a new race has been contacted, and they seem friendly. Yet something about it affects her negatively—she has no desire to rush off and meet the big white six-legs and be given the “smart treatment.” Boney and Ko were supposed to be a little—innocent. Maybe they were fooled in some way, taken advantage of? But she can’t think why, or what. It’s beyond her.…

  The other thing that’s clear is that this should go to Base, fastest. Wasn’t there a ship going to follow Boney and Ko’s route? That would take them to the cat planet, which is at—she consults her wrist—thirty-twenty north, et cetera. Oh, dear, must she go back? Turn back, abort her trip to deliver this? Why had she been so smart, pulling in other people’s business?

  But wait. If it’s urgent, she could speed it by calling Base and reading the message, thus bypassing the last leg. Then surely they wouldn’t crack her for interfering! Maybe she’s still in commo range.

  She powers up the transponder and starts calling FedBase 900. Finally a voice responds, barely discernible through the noise. She fiddles with the suppressors and gets it a bit clearer.

  “FedBase 900, this is CC-One at AL Beacon One. Do you read me? I have intercepted a message pipe from Supply Ship DRS 914 B-K, the missing ship, Boney and Ko.” She repeats. “Do you read that?”

  “Affirmative, CC-One. Message from ship 914 B-K intercepted. What is the message?”

  “It’s too long to read. But listen—important. They are on their way to a planet at—wait a minim—” She rolls the record back and gets the coordinates. “And before that they stayed at that planet thirty-twenty north—you have the specs. There are people there! It’s a First Contact, I think. But listen, they say something’s funny. I don’t think you should go there until you get the whole message. I’m sending it right on.”

  “CC-One, I lost part of that. Is planet at thirty-twenty north a First Contact?”

  Garble is breaking up Commo’s voice. Coati shouts as clearly as she can, “Yes! Affirmative! But don’t, repeat, do—not—go—there—until you get B-K’s original message. I—will—send—pipe—at once. Did you get that?”

  “Repeating.… Do not proceed to planet thirty-twenty north, forty-two-twenty-eight west until B-K message received. Pipe coming soonest. Green, CC-One?”

  “Go. If I can’t make the pipe work, I’ll bring it. CC-One signing off.” She finishes in a swirl of loud static, and turns her attention to getting the pipe back on its way.

  But before she takes the cassette out of the voder, she rechecks the designation of the planet B-K are headed for. Eighteen-ten north. Twenty-eight-thirty west. RD Thirty. That’s closer than the First Contact planet; that’s right, they said they’d stop there on their way home. She copies the first coordinates off on her workpad, and replaces them on her wrist with the new ones. If she wants to help look for Boney and Ko, she could go straight there—but of course she hasn’t really made up her mind. As she rolls back her sleeve, she notices that her arm still feels odd, but she can’t see any trace of a cold-burn. She rubs the arm a couple of times and it goes away.

  “Getting goosey from excitement,” she mutters. She has a childish habit of talking aloud to herself when she’s alone. She figures it’s because she was alone so much as a child, happily playing with her space toys and holos.

  Putting the message pipe back on course proves to be absurdly simple. She blows it clean of the yellow powdery stuff, reinserts the cassette, and ejects it beside the view-ports. Fascinated, she watches the little ship spin slowly, orienting to its homing frequency broadcast from Base 900. Then, as if satisfied, it begins to glide away, faster and faster. Sure enough, as well as she can judge, it’s headed down the last leg from Beacon One to FedBase. Neat! She’s never heard of pipes before; there must be all kinds of marvelous frontier gadgets that’ll be new to her.

  She has a guilty twinge as she sees it go. Isn’t it her duty to go nearer back to Base and read the whole thing? Could the men be in some kind of trouble where every minim counts? But they sounded green, only maybe a little tired. And she understands it’s their routine to send a pipe after every stop. If some of those corrections are important, she could never read them straight; her voice would give out. Better they have Boney’s own report.

  She turns back to figuring out her course, and finds she was fibbing: she has indeed made up her mind. She’ll just go to the planet B-K were headed for and see if she can find them there. Maybe they got too sick to move on, maybe they found another alien race they got involved with. Maybe their ship’s in trouble.… Any number of reasons they could be late, and she might be helpful. And now she knows enough about the pipes to know that they can’t be sent from a planet’s surface. Only from above the atmosphere. So if Boney and Ko can’t lift, they can’t message for help—by pipe, at least.

  She’s half-talking this line of reasoning out to herself as she works on the holocharts. Defining and marking in a brand-new course for the computer is far more work than she’d realized; the school problems she had done must have been chosen for easy natural corridors. “Oh, gods … I’ve got to erase again; there’s an asteroid path there. Help! I’ll never get off this beacon at this rate—explorers must have spent half their time mapping!”

  As she mutters, she becomes aware of something like an odd little echo in the ship. She looks around; the cabin is tightly packed with shiny cases of supplies. “Got my acoustics all buggered up,” she mutters. That must be it. But there seems to be a peculiar delay; for example, she hears the word “Help!” so tiny-clear that she actually spends a few minim searching the nearby racks. Could a talking animal pet or something have got in at FarBase? Oh, the poor creature. Unless she can somehow get it in cold-sleep, it’ll die.

  But nothing more happens, and she decides it’s just the new acoustical reflections. And at last she achieves a good, safe three-leg course to that system at eighteen-ten north. She’s pretty sure an expert could pick out a shorter, elegant, two-leg line, but she doesn’t want to risk being waked up by some unforeseen obstacle. So she picks routes lined by well-corrected red dwarfs and other barely visible sky features. These charts are living history, she thinks. Not like the anonymous holos back home, where everything is checked a hundred times a year, and they give you only trip-strips. In these charts she can read the actual hands of the old explorers. That man Ponz, for instance—he must have spent a lot of time working around the route to the yellow suns, before he landed on thirty-twenty and crashed and died.… But she’s dawdling now. She stacks the marked cassettes in order in her computer take-up, and clicks the first one in. To the unknown, at last!

  She readies her cold-sleep chest and hops in. As she relaxes, she notices she still has a strange sensation of being accompanied by something or someone. “Maybe because I’m sort of one of the company of space now,” she tells herself romantically, and visualizes a future chart with a small “CC” correction. Hah! She laughs aloud, drowsily, in the darkness, feeling great. An almost physical rosy glow envelopes her as she sinks to dreamless stasis. />
  She can take off thus unconscious amid pathless space with no real fear of getting lost and being unable to return, because of a marvelously simple little gadget carried by all jumpships—a time-lapse recorder in the vessel’s tail, which clicks on unceasingly, recording the star scene behind. It’s accelerated by motion in the field, and slows to resting state when the field is static. So, whenever the pilot wishes to retrace his route, he has only to take out the appropriate cassette and put it up front in his guidance computer. The computer will hunt until it duplicates the starfield sequences of the outward path, thus bringing the ship infallibly, if somewhat slowly, back along the course it came.

  * * *

  She wakes and jumps out to see a really new star scene—a great sprawl of radiant golden suns against a very dark arm of Rift. The closest star of the group, she finds, is eighteen-ten north, just as she’s calculated! The drive has cut off at the margin of its near gravity field; it will be a long thrust drive in.

  Excitement like a sunrise is flooding her. She’s made it! Her first solo jump!

  And with the mental joy is still that physical glow, so strong it puzzles her for a minim. Physical, definitely; it’s kind of like the buzz of self-stimulation, but without the sticky feeling that self-stimulation usually gives her. Their phys ed teacher, who’d showed them how to relieve sex tension, said that the negative quality would go away, but Coati hasn’t bothered with it all that very much. Now she thinks that this shows that sheer excitement can activate sex, as the teacher said. “Ah, go away,” she mutters impatiently. She’s got to start thrust drive and run on in to where the planets could be.

  As soon as she’s started, she turns to the scope to check. Planets—yes! One—two—four—and there it is! Blue-green and white even at this distance! Boney and Ko had said it tested highly terraform. It looks it, all right, thinks Coati, who had seen only holos of antique Earth. She wonders briefly what the missing nonterraform part could be: irregularities of climate, absence of some major lifeforms? It doesn’t matter—anything over 75 percent means livable without protective gear, air and water present and good. She’ll be able to get out and explore in the greatest comfort—on a new world! But are Boney and Ko already there?