A Voice in the Night

by Jack McDevitt

  There’d been a fair number of changes in the VR-2 since I’d taken the Coraggio around the block. They downloaded data. Then they started setting situations and directing me to respond. Fuel-line breakdown. Main tabulator providing suspect information. Solar flare on its way. I made course adjustments, connected with an asteroid, and locked it into the grappler. I ran the scopes and sensors. Emergencies kept coming. The magnetic mirrors became misaligned, the plasma flow went unstable, and we had a port-scope malfunction. I had to search through the Kuiper Belt for the Coraggio. When I found it, half my scanners went down and I had to maneuver alongside without their help. Seat of the pants, you might say.

  And the Coraggio had problems of its own. I sent the robots over, reestablished her power, disconnected Lucy, who’d become unresponsive, and installed an automated system to bring the ship home.

  On the return flight, I had to adjust the scanners and the environment and also compensate for problems in one of the heat sinks. I experienced a port-side thruster breakdown and had to diagnose strange noises in the number-two engine.

  In the end, the techs updated my software. Then they walked off and I went back to watching news shows. The conversations were still primarily about us. The preponderance of opinion—or at least the loudest voices—wanted us shut down. The Eagle Project, according to detractors, was a program without a point. Moreover, we were entering an election cycle, and we’d become an anchor around the neck of every incumbent politician who’d supported us.

  Finally, Morris showed up. “Very good,” he said. “You passed.” He was delighted. “We should go have a drink.”

  It was his favorite joke. “Morris,” I told him, “I’d have a drink with you anytime. And I can suggest how we might make it possible.” I started to outline the kind of adaptation I’d need to enjoy a rum and Coke, but his eyes rolled.

  “When you get home, Sara,” he said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He sat down at his desk. “Meantime, be careful out there.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. We’ll be moving you up to the Excelsior this evening.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sara?”

  “Yes, Morris?”

  “Make something happen.”

  AI’s aren’t supposed to feel psychological pressure. In fact, the technical experts argue it can’t happen. AI’s are very good at simulating human emotions. It’s supposed to be part of the overall illusion. But only crazy people buy into the notion that we are truly conscious. I’ve had debates with Morris, who pretends to believe I’m really there, that I’m actually a thoughtful entity. That, when his daughter Erika was severely injured in a car crash last year, I felt genuinely sorry. But he doesn’t. Not really. And I have to confess the attitude is irritating.

  I mean, that’s the whole point of having an AI, really. Any sufficiently advanced software package can run climate control and remind the boss that he has an appointment with one of the supervisors in twenty minutes. Or can oversee the operations of a VR-2 in deep space.

  But like everybody else, Morris wanted more. He wanted a reliable confederate, someone he could talk to, confide in. I won’t go so far as to say he wanted a friend, but there were times it felt that way. And it was frustrating to know that, down deep, he didn’t realize I really was there when he needed me.

  They took me to the Excelsior and made the insertion. I was just getting my bearings when a call came in from Calkin: “Okay, Sara. Go out there and do it. Bring her home.” His pale gray features managed a smile but it didn’t look convincing.

  “I’ll try, Dr. Calkin.”

  “I guess that’s about all we can ask. You have enough hydrogen for the round trip. More than enough. We loaded you up pretty well since you may be out there a while looking for Lucy. You ready to go?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “When do I leave?”

  “They tell me it’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  A technician was standing by, waiting for us to finish.

  “Good luck.” He half-raised his right fist in a give-’em-hell gesture. It was the first time he’d spoken to me as if I were actually there. He looked at me momentarily, and I sensed something in his blue eyes. Fear, probably. Uncertainty. Then he lowered the fist and blinked off.

  I didn’t actually get a look at the Excelsior until I’d been set up inside. It was a duplicate, of course, of the Coraggio. But I hadn’t actually seen it before that afternoon. The VR-2 has an awkward appearance. It consists primarily of a hull with three massive heat sinks running almost its entire length, a pair of exhaust tubes, and two fusion-powered drive units. Its prow resembles a large block with rounded edges. This was the shield, designed to protect the vehicle from rocks and dust. The grapplers are housed inside the shield. They’re used to catch and secure an asteroid, which becomes the source of hydrogen and propellants for the fusion drive; they also provide more security against stray particles. When you’re moving at thousands of miles per second, even a bit of dust can sting.

  I should mention that, at the time when Lucy went missing, nobody had yet gotten to a thousand miles per second, though the Coraggio had reached 865.

  Morris liked to remind me that running a simulation is nothing like experiencing the real thing. He has that exactly right, though probably not in the way he meant. He was thinking of the pressures generated by acceleration or course changes. But I think he was missing something. It’s true that, on board a ship, I have no sense of movement other than the incoming data. But I feel an enormous difference when I’m actually in the pilot’s seat, so to speak: I can feel the power of the engines.

  It’s psychological. Of course that shouldn’t be happening since everyone assures me I don’t have a psychological function.

  The Excelsior was located about a mile from the space station Liberty, silhouetted against a curving rim of white clouds. It was the first time I’d been in orbit since my Coraggio flight. When I’d gotten back on that occasion, a voice from the station had said Welcome home, and I’d thought how great it was. Everyone had been so excited. They’d extracted me from the ship and taken me down to the space center for a celebration. I even got to say a few words about how proud I was, what an honor it had been, and so on.

  Then they moved me to Huntsville, and I started answering phones and seeing to the air conditioning.

  I’ve often thought that humans are fortunate in having a mobile capability. It provides the option to get up and walk out.

  “Excelsior. This is Liberty Station. Launch in ten minutes.”

  “Roger that,” I said. I love being able to talk like an astronaut.

  I started the engines. Checked all systems. And waited. Finally: “Excelsior, clear to go.” Deep baritone voice.

  I set the clocks at midnight, eased away from the space station, turned onto my heading, took a final look at my energy levels, and began to accelerate. I didn’t feel any effects, of course. But I remembered Morris’s comment when I took out the Coraggio last year: “You literally roared out of town, baby.”

  “Liberty,” I said, “this is Excelsior. Under way.”

  “Copy that, Sara.”

  I didn’t know who was manning the ops desk in the space station, but I decided I liked him.

  I was accelerating at almost twice the rate I’d used on my previous mission. By the end of the first hour, the Excelsior had reached eighteen miles per second.

  Even though there were no human passengers, the ship did have a cockpit. Two chairs were positioned for use by the pilot and whoever else might be along. In my experience, they’d been used exclusively by technicians. I tried to imagine Morris in one of them, enduring that acceleration. And, coincidentally, while that was running through my mind, he called.

  “How you doing, Sara?”

  “I’m good, boss. Wish you were with me.”

  “In a way, I am. I assume you’ve had no problems?”

  “Negative. N
ot a thing.”

  “Okay. Have a big time.”

  “I plan to.” Neither of us knew quite what to say. I’d be gone for at least four months and I wanted to tell him I’d miss him. But the world was listening, and I didn’t want to give everybody a laugh line. Not at Morris’s expense, anyhow. I thought about asking who was answering the phones now that I was gone, but I let it go.

  At about 0300 I passed the Moon. At 0829 I hit five million mph. Liberty called, wanting to know about fuel consumption. We were doing better than anticipated.

  There was a delay of about a minute. Then they were back: “Excelsior, you are go for Starbright.”

  Starbright was the name they’d given Minetka. They had a tendency to overstate things when they named projects. “Copy that,” I said.

  I thought they were finished, but a few minutes later the voice returned: “Be advised solar activity is currently higher than normal. It is expected to increase over the next few hours, but it shouldn’t present a problem for you.”

  Nothing more was scheduled until midnight the following day. Until then we’d continue to accelerate. Then I’d shut the engines down and we’d go into cruise mode for two months. When the Excelsior got within range of Minetka, Starbright, I’d need another two days to brake.

  I ran a second systems check. That was unnecessary, really; an alarm would alert me to any likely problem. But I was a captain again and I enjoyed the role, which I played to the hilt.

  I would have liked to wander around the Excelsior in uniform, soliciting reports from my crew, the way they did in the science fiction films. And welcome a few passengers on board. Glad you chose Brightstar Transport, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you enjoy the trip. Beverages will be served as soon as we reach cruising speed…in another day and a half.

  Actually, there wouldn’t have been much space available for visitors.

  Later that first evening, Liberty called again. It was Morris. “How you doing, Sara?”

  “Need a chess partner, Morris.” Actually he didn’t play chess. But he understood.

  I was pretty sure Calkin frowned on Morris’s inclination to talk informally with me. He undoubtedly saw it as a character flaw, a weakness. It was something lower-level employees do, and Calkin would have thought that Morris was demeaning himself, or maybe worse if he was actually listening to our exchanges.

  I had to wait almost four minutes for his response. “Mary’s coming for the weekend, with Adam and Mike.” His wife and kids. Erika had fought her way back after the accident, and had returned to college. “We’ll be looking for a place.” I wondered whether he’d be buying, since NASA’s future was so uncertain. “When we get settled, we’ll have you over. Make a party of it.” That was the kind of remark guaranteed to get him in trouble with Calkin. He’d think Morris was losing his mind.

  “Adam will want something on the beach,” I said. The time delay meant nothing to me, of course. But I could imagine Morris, hooked up from his office (where it was close to noon), trying to keep the conversation coherent.

  Standard operating procedure required me to check in twice daily. I complied, informing Liberty each time that everything was on schedule.

  I was still accelerating on the second day when I passed the orbit of Mars. The Excelsior had gone seventy-two million miles when, at midnight of Day 2, I finally shut the drive down and we went into cruise mode.

  I could have put everything on automatic and gone to sleep at that point, waking when we got into the vicinity of Minetka, or when we received a transmission, either from Liberty or, if we were very lucky, from Lucy. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Even though I took no pleasure in being alone in that ship, I knew I would not get there again, and I could not rationalize throwing my chance away. The day would come when I would wish very much to come back, to live again in the Excelsior’s cockpit, riding through the night. So I stayed awake. I asked Liberty to forward some radio programs, which they did. They knew I enjoyed the talk shows, so they kept me well-supplied with them. I even heard my own voice, talking with the space station. “Everything on schedule.” “All systems five by.” “Saw an asteroid today.” Nothing very exciting.

  I continued to ask about the Coraggio, and those clips also got played. One female host commented that my apparent concern was “touching.” She emphasized apparent. Of course she would. There was really nobody aboard the Excelsior.

  The talkers had always seemed to me narrowly focused and out of touch with reality. And from my perspective approaching the asteroid belt, that hadn’t changed. But they had voices. And maybe that was all that mattered. I didn’t care if they were talking about a celebrity’s wedding dress or a corrupt politician. They had voices, and I, simply by listening, became part of the conversation.

  Unfortunately, a flight through the solar system isn’t likely to be what most people expect. I’d have loved to soar past Mars, pick my way through the asteroids, get a good look at Jupiter, and glide through Saturn’s rings, but my course to Minetka wasn’t going to take me close to anything…other than Neptune.

  I was cruising at three million miles per hour, so even had I gotten within a reasonable distance of Saturn, which I would have given much to see, I wouldn’t have been there long.

  My reports acquired a boring sameness. Liberty, this is Excelsior. Running warm and still on schedule.

  The operators always responded, “Copy that, Excelsior.” One of them, a woman whose name I never learned, asked me a couple of times if I was okay. Unlike the others, she seemed to realize, or allowed herself to pretend, that she was really talking to somebody. Soon, I didn’t hear her anymore and I wondered whether she’d gotten into trouble. I didn’t ask the other operators about her because, if something had happened, I didn’t want to risk getting her in deeper. I tried to convince myself that she’d simply been promoted, or had run off with an English teacher. But that was the incident that made me realize I seriously disliked Denny Calkin.

  I never found out what, if anything, had happened.

  I spent a lot of time just watching the basic image coming in on the forward scopes and portrayed on the monitors: a black canopy full of lights. Where’s a good comet when you need one?

  My exchanges with Morris diminished as I cleared Jupiter orbit. By then the delay in any exchange was preposterous. If I’d asked Morris how he was doing, I would have had to wait an hour and a half for my answer. We kept communicating, though, but it was occasional.

  “The world is watching, Sara. You’re getting constant coverage. Right up there with America First and Wild for You. Harry Pavlo, on a talk show yesterday, said you should write a book. Mary thinks the book thing is a good idea. Anyhow, Adam’s teachers have asked if you’d be willing, when you come back, to talk to some of her students at the high school. We haven’t tried anything like that before, but I don’t see a problem with it if you don’t.”

  On Day 8, I left Saturn behind. Or would have had it been in the area. I mentioned earlier that I’d wished I could have seen it up close. Actually, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t. I’d refrained from checking its position because I wanted to keep the possibility open. But the odds were remote. And they held: it turned out to be on the other side of the sun somewhere, which meant I wouldn’t even have a shot at it on the way back.

  In the meantime, the talk shows lost interest in the Eagle mission. We were replaced by Tim Hurst, the popular comedian, who’d been photographed at an orgy when he was supposed to be working on a new film; and by the on-again/off-again corruption scandal of Senator Brickhouse, who’d built his career as a crusader against lawbreakers of all stripes.

  I knew that Morris had liked the press we were getting, and had hoped that interest would remain high. And I’ll confess I’d enjoyed the attention myself. So I manufactured an image of an asteroid flashing by, and sent it on to Liberty. It created a mild sensation. And of course no harm was done.

  To really make a splash, though, I needed something more stirrin
g than a chunk of rock. I was seriously tempted to arrange a close passage with a comet, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t get away with it.

  One possibility would have been to create an alien vehicle, send a startled message back, along with pictures. ‘It tracked me for about an hour. Then it turned away and disappeared within minutes.’

  But I couldn’t get that one past my conscience. And Morris wouldn’t have approved.

  I also thought about an asteroid with a feature on it like a temple. Or a face. Faces were good. But it would have to get lost and eventually become a historical mystery like Stonehenge or the Mary Celeste or Judge Crater, and I knew I’d never be able to keep my secret. Eventually I’d unburden myself to Morris, and embarrass him. I couldn’t have that.

  I did the right thing, of course, but what a blown opportunity.

  On Day 24, I passed the orbit of Uranus. One of the radio people noted the event, remarking that I was now in God’s country. The Kuiper Belt lay ahead, beginning near Neptune. Then Pluto. And finally the Oort Cloud, roughly a light-year distant. It would be a long ride, even for the Excelsior.

  I was several days beyond Uranus when Liberty relayed an interview from CBS. The interviewee was Colin Edward, who was identified as the chief of operations for NASA. Chief of Operations. That had been Morris’s title.

  Damn.

  Edward talked about plans for the future, where the space program hoped to be in ten years, and, yes, he said, the hunt for the Coraggio was on schedule. “But you have to realize,” he said, “that we’ve heard nothing from the ship for several weeks. I think we need to face reality: It’s lost out there, and our chances of finding it are slim at best.”