—In a corner, pieces of stone. Hutch recognized them immediately, slices of the columns, the rounded roof cut in half, pieces of the steps—
It was the island building. “Eventually, we’ll take it home,” said Abel. “We’ll reassemble it and put it on the front lawn of the Tolliver Building.” At the Academy.
“My thought exactly,” said Eddington.
Forty-three hours after departing the Complex, Jake and Hutch rode the Copperhead’s shuttle down to Lyla’s surface. The Flower was unquestionably one of the Great Monuments. It had been erected in the middle of a flat rocky plain. Protected from the void by their pressure suits, they stood in front of it, and looked up. It towered over them, its long golden-red petals soaring into the night. The design was similar to the others in the series, the style, the general sense of ethereal beauty defying a boundless, uncaring universe. It was not, however, a depiction of a flowering plant, as Hutch had thought at first, but rather of solar flares, a tribute to the local sun. The flares, eight of them, lifted out of an engraved base and rose toward the unforgiving sky. They were of different sizes and textures. One was broken. Hutch looked up at it. No. Not broken. Unfinished.
Neither Groombridge nor Hibachi’s World was in the sky. The monument was on the back side of Lyla, so the planet was never visible, since the satellite was in tidal lock. But the stars were bright, and the monument caught and reflected the illumination.
“It’s magnificent, Jake.” She’d never actually been in the presence of one before.
The base was engraved with two lines of symbols unlike anything she’d seen. Theory held that the reason the engraved symbols never matched each other was because they came from different eras, the most recent ending at about 19,000 B.C.E. “I would like to have met them,” she said. “The builders.”
“You’re a bit late.”
“I have that impression, Jake.”
“And you can’t be sure they’d be friendly.”
“Jake, there’s no way I could be afraid of whoever put this here.”
Benny broke in: “There’s something else. Off to the left of the monument. Your left.”
There was a stone marker. Oval-shaped. Engraved with the same type of characters that were on the base of the monument. Two lines. Jake looked at the engraving, then walked back and looked at the base of the monument. “Different messages,” he said.
Hutch opened her channel to the AI. “Benny, scan the ground. Where we’re standing.”
“Scanning.”
Jake looked puzzled. “You think something’s buried here?”
“Someone.”
“Jake,” said Benny. “There’s a box. With something inside. A skeleton. But it is not human. And I would guess from its condition that it has been here a long time.”
They climbed back into the shuttle and the AI forwarded the images. Details were difficult to make out. It was a biped. Hutch counted six digits on each limb. And she saw a cluster of thin bones underneath that didn’t seem to fit. Wings, maybe? If so, it might be a match for the creature depicted on the Iapetus monument.
“I wonder what happened?” said Jake.
“Best guess?” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“This one died while they were working. While they were putting the thing together. Maybe they got caught off guard by a flare. Maybe it simply fell off a ladder. There’s no way to know. And it doesn’t matter. But they decided to pay tribute to it.”
“By burying it here?”
“That, too.”
“What else?”
“They left the monument incomplete. Maybe for them it constituted the ultimate recognition.”
“Okay,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.” Big smile. “Hutch, I can’t imagine a better way for you to launch your career. Find one of these? They’ll put our pictures on the Wall of Fame.”
“I’ll settle for my license,” she said. “Benny, we have lots of pictures of this?”
“Yes, Captain. I have a substantial record.”
“I suggest,” said Jake, “we call it in now. Let them know what we have. Before somebody else stumbles across it.” He looked at Hutch. “What’s wrong?”
“I think we should direct Benny to destroy the record.”
“What? Why the hell would we do that?”
She hesitated. She was thinking how nice it would be to go back to a hero’s welcome. To become famous.
“Hutch?”
“I think we should forget what we saw here. Just go away and leave it.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“After we call it in, they’re going to come out here and dig everything up. They’ll take the creature back to a lab and dissect it.”
“Of course they will. Hutch, this is one of the Monument Makers.”
“They’ll desecrate the place.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“Religion has nothing to do with it. What do you think the builders would have thought about us ripping up the grave?”
“They’re long gone, Hutch.”
“No,” she said. “They’re still here.”
“I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about, Priscilla.”
“I’m tired of it all,” she said. “This time, Jake, we have some control over what’s happening.” She turned frustrated eyes on her captain. “I’m tired of hot dog stands on the Moon and beachfront homes on Quraqua and wrecked altars back at the Complex.” She looked up at the sky but of course saw no sign of Hibachi’s World. “If you’ll consent, I’d like to let it go. Forget the monument. And hope that Eddington and Ted Abel and people like them don’t notice what’s here. Maybe by the time somebody else comes across this, we’ll be a little smarter.”
Jake let his disappointment show. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Jake.” She saw the uncertainty in his eyes. “Please.”
He touched the marker. Pressed his fingertips against the engraved symbols. “I wonder what it says?”
WAITING AT THE ALTAR
The Copperhead was floating through the fogs of transdimensional space, somewhere between Fomalhaut and Serenity Station, which is to say it was well off the more traveled routes. Priscilla Hutchins was half-asleep in the pilot’s seat. The captain, Jake Loomis, had gone back to the passenger cabin, where he might have drifted off also, or was maybe playing chess with Benny, the AI. Soft music drifted through the ship. The Three Kings doing “Heartbreak.”
Hutch was vaguely aware of the humming and beeping of the electronics, and the quiet flow of air through the vents. Then suddenly she wasn’t. The lights had gone out. And the ship bounced hard, as if it had been dropped into a storm-tossed sea. The displays were off and the warning klaxon sounded. Power down.
“System failure,” said Benny, using the slightly modified tone that suggested he’d also suffered a cutback.
Emergency lights blinked on and cast an eerie glow across the bridge. The ship rocked and slowed and accelerated and rocked again. Then, within seconds, all sense of motion stopped. “Are we back in normal space, Benny?” she asked.
“I can’t confirm, but that seems to be the case.”
Jake’s voice came loud and subtly amused from the cabin: “Hutch, what happened?”
She knew exactly what had happened. This was one more test on her qualification flight. There was no danger to the Copperhead. Nobody was at risk other than herself.
“Engines have shut down,” said Benny.
“Power outage,” she told Jake.
The navigational display flickered back to life. Stars blinked on. The captain appeared at the hatch. “You okay, Hutch?”
“I’m fine.” The misty transdimensional universe that provided shortcuts across the cosmos had vanished, replaced by the vast sweep of the Milky Way. “We’re back outside.” That would have been automatic. During a power failure, the drive unit was designed to return the vehicle to normal space. Otherwise, the
ship risked being lost forever with no chance of rescue. “Benny, is there an imminent threat?”
“Negative, Hutch. Ship is secure.”
“Very good.” She turned to Jake, who was buckling down beside her. He was middle-aged, low-key, competent. His voice never showed emotion. Forbearance sometimes. Tolerance. But that was all. “You want me to send out a distress call?”
“Where would you send it, Hutch?”
“Serenity is closest.” It would of course be a hyperspace transmission. The station would know within a few hours that they were in trouble.
“Good. No. Don’t send. Let’s assume you’ve done that. What’s next?”
There wasn’t actually that much else to do. She asked Benny for details on the damage, and was told where the problems lay and what needed to be done before restarting the engines. The electronics had gone out because the main feeding line had ruptured. She went down into the cargo hold, opened the access hatch, and explained to Jake how she would have managed the repairs. He asked a few questions, seemed satisfied with her replies, and they started back topside.
They were just emerging from the connecting shaft when Benny came back on the circuit. “Hutch, we’re receiving a radio signal. Artificial.”
She looked at Jake. And smiled.
“No,” he said. “It’s not part of the exercise.”
That was hard to believe. But even though the ground rules allowed him to make stuff up, he was not permitted to lie about whether a given occurrence was a drill. “What’s it say, Benny?”
“I have not been able to make a determination. The signal, I suspect, is greatly weakened.”
It made no sense. There wouldn’t be anybody out here. They were light-years from everything.
While Hutch hesitated, Jake took over. “Benny, can you get a fix on the source?”
“Within limits, yes.”
“So where’s it coming from?”
“The nearest star in that direction, Captain, is Capua. But Capua is more than two hundred light-years. Moreover, I believe the transmission is a broadcast signal. Not directional.”
“Okay,” said Jake. “What do you make of it, Hutch?”
“No way an artificial radio signal’s going to travel two hundred light-years. If it’s not directional.”
“Therefore—?”
“It’s a distress call. Somebody actually did what we’ve been rehearsing. Broke down and got thrown out into normal space.”
“So what do we do?”
“If the signal’s so deteriorated that we can’t read it—”
“—Yes?—”
“They’ve been out here a while, and are probably beyond help.”
“And, Priscilla—” He always used her given name when he wanted to make a point. “Are we going to make that assumption?”
She straightened her shoulders. “No, sir.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Benny,” said Hutch, “is the signal still coming in?”
“Yes, it is, Hutch.”
“Any chance if we sit tight you’d be able to get a clear enough reading to tell us what it says?”
“Negative. It’s seriously degenerated.”
Jake cleared his throat. “Why would you bother anyhow?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are the possibilities?”
“It’s probably a distress call.”
“That’s one possibility. What else might it be?”
She thought about it. “We just happened to be in front of it.”
“Good. So what do we do?”
“Find the source.”
“I believe,” said Benny, “I’ve been able to read enough to make a determination.”
“What have you got?”
“I can make out what appears to be Code Six.”
“Code Six,” said Jake. Help. “We haven’t used that one in a few years.”
To find the source of the signal, they had to get another angle. “Benny,” she said, “start engines. Prep for a jump. We want a seventy-degree angle on the transmission. Set for 30 million miles.”
“Starting engines, Hutch.”
The drive unit would require about forty minutes before they could actually do the transdimensional insertion. So she sat back to wait. “You ever run into anything like this before?” she asked Jake.
“Once,” he said. “But it was an automated vehicle. No life-and-death issue. I’ve never seen one where there was actually someone involved. Which is probably the case here.”
She brought up the signal. It was seriously corrupted. She couldn’t make anything out, but she had learned to trust the AI’s. “I wouldn’t want to get stuck out here,” she said.
“No, Hutch, me neither.”
There had been a few ships that had vanished over the years. Vehicles that simply went out somewhere and were never heard from again. It was, she supposed, inevitable. If you were going to travel to seriously remote places, you took your chances.
Jump technology was notoriously inexact. They emerged less than halfway to their intended destination.
“Are we still reading the transmission?” asked Hutch.
“Give me a minute.”
Meanwhile, Benny relayed a chart to the navigation display. He marked their initial position, and drew a line from it indicating the direction from which the transmission had come. He showed their current location and informed them that they weren’t receiving the transmission anymore.
“So either,” said Hutch, “we’ve gotten lost or it’s an intermittent signal.”
“Probably an intermittent signal,” said Jake. He brought some coffee back from the dispenser. “You want some?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Sorry it’s taking so long,” said Benny. “It’s difficult to sort everything.”
“It’s okay, Benny. No hurry.”
It took about two days, but, in Jake’s words, they got lucky. “We’ve got something. It appears to be a shuttle.”
“They’re probably long dead,” said Hutch.
“That’s correct.” Jake’s voice was flat. “Maybe somebody got to them. Let’s hope.”
She wondered momentarily if the signal was a plant. Part of the exercise. If they were testing her judgment. “Benny,” she said, “do we have a record of any lost ships nine years ago?”
“The Forscher,” he said. “It was last reported at Talios in the spring of ’86. Carrying an exobiologist and an actor. Started home and was never heard from again.”
An actor? Hutch’s heart rate began to pick up. “Jake, that would be Dave Simmons.” The ultimate action-hero vid star turned explorer. Simmons had turned out to be even bigger than the characters he portrayed. He’d financed scientific missions, founded schools in remote places, once famously challenged the African dictator Kali Anka to have it out man to man. Anka had declined and been driven from the country a year later.
“The exobiologist was Paul Trelawney,” said Benny. Trelawney had won the Cassimir Award in ’85. “And of course there would also have been a pilot.”
The ship had sent a movement report when it left Talios. A long search had yielded nothing. “So something happened on the way back,” said Hutch, “and they jumped out.” If they’d sent no hypercomm call, used only a standard radio, their chances of being found would have been virtually nil. There was simply too much ground to cover. But if they’d sent a hypercomm transmission, no one had received it.
It was hard to imagine the tall, lantern-jawed Simmons dead. The guy had been the epitome of the leading man, in charge, indestructible, always one step ahead of events. One entertainment commentator had remarked that his loss had “reminded us all of our mortality.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Jake.
“We make a report and then head for Palomus, right? We can’t do anything for the Forscher, or whoever’s in the shuttle, not after all these years, so we just give the Patrol what we have and continu
e the mission.”
He nodded. “That’s by the book.”
She read disapproval in his eyes. Maybe another test of her judgment. “Jake, there’s no possibility here of anyone’s life being endangered. So we let the Patrol know and get back to what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“On the other hand,” he said—
“On the other hand, what?”
“We’re close. And our mission isn’t under time constraints. We can go have a look, and send back additional details.”
“Do we really want to do that?” Hutch was thinking about the shape the captain and his passengers would be in after nine years.
He straightened and looked down at her. “There’s a code, Priscilla. We owe it to them.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t leave people adrift out here if we can help it. It doesn’t matter what the book says. We go over to the shuttle and stand by until the Patrol comes.”
“Finding it was nothing short of a miracle,” said Hutch.
“There is more to it than that, Priscilla,” said Benny. “I was able to track it by fixing its position at several points over the few days during which it had been intermittently transmitting. That had given us direction and velocity. The rest had required some luck, but certainly not a miracle.”
Jake looked amused.
The shuttle was a Voltar II, an earlier model of the vehicle that rested inside the Copperhead’s own launch bay. It was adrift in a place where even the stars seemed dim.
“It explains why they had to use a radio,” said Hutch.
Jake nodded. “They had to abandon ship.”
It looked undamaged. Its registry number, VC112, brightened when the Copperhead’s navigation lights fell on it. It was, of course, silent now. Its ports were dark, although there was still enough power to cause a flicker in the fore and aft warning lamps as they drew near. Hutch turned her forward lights on the vehicle.
The pilot’s seat was occupied.
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