Odyssey к-5

by Джек Макдевитт

  Odyssey

  ( Космоархеологи - 5 )

  Джек Макдевитт

  Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchinson's fifth adventure opens with the former starship pilot deskbound at the Academy (the twenty-third-century equivalent of NASA), which is facing catastrophic cuts to the space program. In a media campaign led by Hutch's old friend, acerbic newspaper editor Gregory MacAllister, pundits and politicians alike argue that the program's money would be better spent on the earthbound threats of global warming and disease. Perhaps not coincidentally, humans everywhere from Earth to Ophiuchi begin witnessing repeated visitations from "moonriders" (apparently alien spherical spacecraft), and they prompt an Academy investigative mission. To humor Hutch and grab a good story, MacAllister joins a spacebound team including a celebrated pilot and a senator's daughter. When the moonriders apparently redirect a few asteroids to destroy an orbiting hotel and narrowly bypass Earth, suspicions begin to emerge that the moonriders--and certain members of the Academy--may not be what they seem to be. McDevitt's energetic, character-driven prose serves double duty by exploring Earth's future political climate and forecasting the potential dangers awaiting humanity among the stars.

  Jack McDevitt

  odyssey

  Acknowledgments

  I’m indebted to Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History, to David DeGraff of Alfred University, and to Athena Andreadis, author of To Seek Out New Life (Three Rivers Press, 1998), for technical assistance. To Howard Bloom, for his excellent The Lucifer Principle (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995). To Ginjer Buchanan, for editorial support. To Ralph Vicinanza, for his continuing encouragement. Special appreciation to Walter Cuirle for the Origins Project. Thanks to Sara and Bob Schwager. And, as always, to my wife and in-house editor, Maureen.

  Dedication

  For Robert Dyke

  The ultimate time traveler

  prologue

  ORDINARILY, JERRY CAVANAUGH would have been asleep in his cabin while the AI took the ship closer to the Sungrazer, the gas giant at Beta Comae Berenices. A world on fire, as the public relations people referred to it. And there was no denying it was a spectacular sight. This flight marked his eighty-eighth visit, and he never tired of looking at it.

  The Sungrazer was a Jovian, four times more massive than Jupiter, with a tight orbit that took it literally through the solar atmosphere, where it burned and flared like a meteor. He marveled that the thing didn’t explode, didn’t turn to a cinder, but every time he came back it was still there, still plowing through the solar hell, still intact. The ultimate survivor.

  It orbited its sun in three days, seven hours. When you got the angle of approach right, got black sky behind it, it became even more spectacular. Of course, the view on the ship’s screens didn’t reflect the view from the ship. In order to get the kind of perspective management wanted, that gave Orion Tours its reputation, the Ranger would have had to approach much closer to the sun than was safe. Instead, when the dramatic hour arrived, he would put the Sungrazer chip into the reader and people would look through the viewports and see images taken from the satellite. It was breathtaking stuff, and if it was a trifle deceptive, who really cared? Orion did not keep the method secret. Occasionally someone asked, and Jerry always told them, yes, the view they were getting was not really what it looked like from the bridge or through the ship’s scopes. Too dangerous. This is what you would see if we could get in sufficiently close. But of course you wouldn’t want that.

  Of course not, they always replied.

  That would not happen, of course, until tomorrow morning, when they made their closest approach. The tour was timed so that the visual changeover happened during the night, when the passengers were — usually — asleep in their cabins. At around seven or so, when they began getting up, the first thing they saw would be the Sungrazer, and it was probably the most dramatic moment of the entire flight.

  He had thirty-six passengers, a full load, including three sets of honeymooners, seven kids fourteen or under, one clergyman who had saved for a lifetime to make the trip, one contest winner, and two physicians. The contest winner was a young woman from Istanbul who had never before been outside her native country. He wasn’t clear on the precise nature of the contest, and his language skills did not allow explication. But she sat wide-eyed near the main display all during the approach.

  JERRY HAD BEEN enduring sleepless nights on recent flights. He’d resisted going to see someone about it, but the condition had worsened this time out. On this last night before starting home, he hadn’t been able to sleep at all, so he’d dressed and come up to the bridge, where he sat, paging listlessly through the library. The AI was silent. The navigation screens gave him views at several magnifications of the sun and the gas giant.

  He heard muffled voices in one of the compartments. Then the ship was quiet again, save for the vents and the electronics.

  This would be his last flight before retirement. The kids were grown and gone now, so he and Mara had thought about taking off somewhere alone, an extended vacation to Hawaii, but in the end they’d decided it would be nice to stay home. Jerry had lost whatever passion he’d had for travel. He’d settle for going down to the bridge club, and maybe eating dinner at the Gallop —

  The AI’s voice broke in: “Jerry, we have activity at one eight zero.”

  Jerry looked up at the screen carrying the feed from the after scope. The sky was brilliant, the Milky Way trailing into infinity.

  “Sensor reading,” said the AI. “Objects approaching.”

  “On-screen.”

  “They are on-screen. If you look closely, you can see them.”

  Dark objects moving against the stars.

  “What are they, Rob?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Asteroids?”

  “They are artificial.”

  “Are you saying they’re not ours?”

  “I am merely saying I am not familiar with vehicles of this type.”

  “Moonriders.”

  “Are there such things?”

  “Right now I’d say yes. They aren’t on a collision vector, are they?”

  “No. But they’ll come close. Within twenty kilometers.”

  That was enough to scrape the paint. What the hell were those things?

  “Range is twenty-two hundred kilometers and closing.”

  He counted eight of them. No, nine. Flying in formation like a flock of birds. Coming up his tailpipe.

  Flying in formation. What natural objects fly in formation?

  “They’ll pass on the port side,” said the AI.

  “Anybody else supposed to be out here, Rob?”

  “Negative. No other traffic scheduled.”

  “How fast are they coming?”

  “Fifteen kilometers per second. They will reach us in two and a half minutes.”

  “Nothing on the circuit?”

  “Not a sound.”

  “Okay. Let me know if anything changes. Meantime, let’s get a close-up. I’d like to see what they look like.”

  The AI focused on the lead object. The others vanished off-screen. It was a sphere. Not much reflectivity. That was odd so close to the sun. “Do we wish to alert the passengers?” asked Rob.

  There was no reason to believe the objects were dangerous. But he didn’t like things he couldn’t explain. He woke Mysha, his flight attendant, and told her what was coming. Then he flicked on the allcom. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we may have to maneuver. Please secure your harnesses.”

  The objects were in precise formation and, as he watched, all nine began to turn to starboard. Jerry delivered a string of expletives. “They’re on a collision course.”

&n
bsp; “Not quite,” said the AI. “If they maintain present heading, they will still pass to port. The closest of them will approach to within two hundred meters.”

  He thought about easing away. But it was probably not a good idea. The first law of successful navigation was that when somebody else was close by, make no surprise moves. “Hold steady,” he told Rob.

  “They are ninety seconds away.”

  He’d flicked on the bank of harness status lamps. Two of his passengers were still not belted down. “Rob?” he said.

  “I will see to it.”

  Moonriders. He’d never taken their existence seriously. But there they were. “Rob, give me a channel.”

  “Jerry, I have been trying to contact them.”

  “Let me try.”

  “Channel is open.”

  The last two warning lamps winked off. Other lights came on. Some of his passengers wanted to talk to him.

  Jerry took a deep breath. “This is the Ranger,” he said. “Is anybody there? Please acknowledge.”

  He waited. But heard only static.

  “They’re slowing,” said Rob.

  BLACK GLOBES. HE could make out devices on the hulls, antennas, other equipment that might have been sensors, or weapons. They re-formed themselves into a straight line running parallel to the course he was traveling. Still to port.

  “Distance between units is four kilometers.”

  The first one passed.

  “Antennas are pointed in our direction,” said Rob.

  And the second. They blinked quickly past, one every couple seconds. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and the line pulled well ahead of him. He watched them settle back into their vee.

  “Phenomena of this type,” said Rob, “have been reported here and in several other locations over the past two years.”

  “We have everything on the record?”

  “Yes, Jerry.”

  Ahead, the globes were becoming hard to see. He got on the allcom. “Anyone on the port side will have seen unidentified vehicles passing. I don’t know what they were, but they are gone now. However, I’d like you to stay belted in for the moment.”

  Moonriders. So named because they’d first been reported as dark shadows moving among the moons of Pollux IV. That had been forty years ago.

  They were gone now. Like the tour ship, they seemed headed toward the Sungrazer. Sightseers from somewhere else?

  PART ONE

  macallister

  chapter 1

  Wherever it is dark, there will always be strange lights. In primitive times, the luminescences were fairies. Then they became departing souls headed for paradise. Then UFOs. Now they’re moonriders. It doesn’t seem as if we ever grow up. Those imaginative souls reporting alien vessels circling the Pleiades cannot bring themselves to believe the anomaly might be anything so prosaic as a reflection. Or perhaps not enough ice in the Scotch.

  — Gregory MacAllister, “Down the Slippery Slope”

  Wolfgang Esterhaus squinted at the man at the bar, compared him with the picture in his notebook, and approached him. “Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  The man was huddled over a beer. The glass was almost empty. He threw Esterhaus a surprised look, which quickly morphed into hostility. “Yeah? Who are you?”

  “Name’s Wolfie. Can I spring for another round?”

  “Sure. Go ahead, Wolfie.” His voice had an edge. “What did you want?”

  “I’m with The National.”

  “Ah.” The irritation intensified. “And what would The National want with me?”

  “Just talk a bit.” He signaled for two fresh glasses. “You work for Orion Tours, right?”

  Cavanaugh considered the question, as if the answer required serious thought. “That’s correct,” he said. “But if you want to ask me about the moonriders, do it. Don’t stand there and screw around.”

  “Okay.” Wolfie was too professional to get annoyed. “I’m sorry. I guess you get hassled a lot these days.”

  “You could say that.”

  “So tell me about the moonriders.”

  “I doubt I can add anything to what you’ve already read. Or seen.”

  “Tell me anyhow.”

  “Okay. There were nine of them. They were round. Black globes.”

  “They weren’t carrying lights of any kind?”

  “Didn’t you see the pictures?”

  “I saw them.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Not much.” Wolfie hunched over the bar and looked at his own image in the mirror. He looked like a guy who could use some time off. “And they were in formation.”

  “Went past us one after the other, then lined up into a vee.”

  “You didn’t see them again?”

  “No.” Cavanaugh was on the small side. Black hair, dark skin, carefully maintained mustache. Dark eyes that concentrated on the beer.

  “How did the passengers react?”

  “Only a couple of them saw anything. At the time it was happening, I don’t think they thought anything about it. Only afterward, when I told them what it was.”

  “They didn’t get scared?”

  “Afterward, maybe. A little bit.”

  “How about you?”

  “If I scared that easily, I’d find another line of work.”

  Esterhaus had always assumed that people who saw moonriders were lunatics. That the visual records they came back with were faked. But Cavanaugh looked solid, unimaginative, honest. Utterly believable.

  Still, it was hard to account for the images on the record. Dark globes in formation. Furthermore, they’d been seen since by others. Reginald Cottman, on October 3, while hauling cargo out to the Origins Project, halfway between 61 Cygni and 36 Ophiuchi. And Tanya Nakamoto, on another Orion Tours cruise, had seen them at Vega. A construction crew, four or five people, had reported a sighting a couple weeks ago at Alpha Cephei.

  Physicists had been trying to explain them away without invoking extraterrestrials. The general public was excited, though of course it doesn’t take much to do that. It was why The National was interested. Gregory MacAllister, his editor, didn’t believe a word of it, but it was a hot story at the moment. And a chance to cast ridicule, which was what The National did best.

  The reality was that this was a bad time for interstellar flight. Several bills were pending before Congress that would reduce funding for the Academy and other deep-space programs. The World Council was also talking about cutting back.

  Meantime, the number of moonrider sightings was increasing. MacAllister suspected Orion Tours had tricked the passengers on Cavanaugh’s ship, had put together an illusion, and he’d hired an ex-pilot to demonstrate how it could be done. It was, after all, only a matter of running some images past a scheduled flight. How hard could it be?

  “Could it have been rigged?” Wolfie asked.

  Cavanaugh finished his beer. “No. I was there. It happened just like I said.”

  “Jerry, how long have you been working for Orion?”

  He looked at the empty glass, and Wolfie ordered more. “Sixteen years this November.”

  “Just between us, what do you think of management?”

  He grinned. “They’re the finest, most upstanding people I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m serious, Jerry. It won’t go any further.”

  “They’d stab one another for the corner office. And they don’t give a damn for the help.”

  “Would they cheat?”

  “You mean would they pull off something like the moonriders if they could?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “Sure. If they thought it would help business, and they could get away with it.” The beers came. Cavanaugh picked his up, said thanks, and drank deep. “But there’s no way they could have made it happen.”

  “Without your help.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  …Yet there is palpable evidence for the existence
of moonriders. There are visual records available to anyone who wants to look. It might be time to get serious and make an effort to find out what these objects are.

  — The Washington Post, Monday, February 16, 2235

  chapter 2

  We have spent a half century now poking around the local stars. What we have found is a sprinkling of barbarians, one technological civilization that has never gotten past their equivalent of 1918, and the Goompahs, of whom the less said the better. Mostly what we have discovered is that the Orion Arm of the Milky Way is very big, and apparently very empty.

  We have spent trillions in the effort. For what purpose, no one seems able to explain.

  The primary benefit we’ve gotten from all this has been the establishment of two colonies: one for political wackos, and the other for religious hardcases. It may be that the benefits derived simply from that justify the cost of the superluminal program.

  But I doubt it. Jails or islands would be cheaper. Education would be smarter.

  Today, as we consider pouring more of the planet’s limited wealth into this financial black hole, maybe we should pause to ask what we hope to gain from this vast investment. Knowledge? Scientists say there are no privileged places in the universe. If that is so, we are now in position to calculate, as the fanatics like to say, what’s out there.

  What’s out there is primarily hydrogen. Lots of nitrogen. Rocks. A few spear-carrying cultures. And empty space.

  It’s time to call a halt. Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won’t need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.

  — Gregory MacAllister, interview on the Black Cat Network, Tuesday, February 17

  It’s a long way to Betelgeuse. One hundred ninety light-years, give or take. Almost three weeks in jump status. Plus a day or so at the far end to make an approach.