A medical unit drifted down onto the far end of the roof, where the emergency pad was located. She gave the taxi her address and settled back.
It lifted off, turned south, and picked up speed toward the Potomac.
SHE USUALLY WORKED a half day Saturdays, especially when things were happening, which was pretty much all the time. She’d been at her desk less than an hour when the report came in. The Gallardo had inspected a cloud out near Alpha Cassiopeiae and found another hedgehog. The circumstances were the same: It was out front, same course, same velocity. Six and a half kilometers in diameter. Preliminary scan suggested it was an identical object. The only thing different was its range from the cloud, only fifteen thousand klicks.
The two sites were hundreds of light-years apart.
She’d barely digested the information when the watch officer called with more. The local cloud had one too. Again it was identical in everything except range, which was forty-two hundred kilometers. Even the spines were set in an identical pattern. As if the objects had come out of the same mold. There was some minor damage, probably caused by collisions.
It looked harmless.
She sat several minutes studying the images and went down to the lab. Harold’s office was empty, but Charlie Wilson was there, and a few of the technicians. It had been Hutch’s experience that bosses are rarely loved, and whatever the employees might say, there was inevitably a sigh of relief when they moved on. Even when the movement was to a better world. But everyone had liked Harold. And the mood in the lab was genuinely depressed.
“You know why we needed him?” Charlie told her after she’d sat down to share a glass of pineapple juice. “He was as big as any of the people who try to shoulder their way to the equipment. Which meant he could say no. He could keep things orderly. Who’s going to refuse time on the systems now to Stettberg? Or to Mogambo?”
“You will, Charlie,” she said. “And I’ll back you up.” He looked doubtful, but she smiled. “You’ll do fine. Just don’t show any hesitation. You tell them no, that’s it. Let them know we’ll call them if we get available time. Then thank them kindly and get off the circuit.”
He took a long pull at the juice without saying anything.
“Charlie.” She changed her tone so he’d see the subject was closed. “I want to talk with you about the omegas.”
“Okay.”
“Last week, Wednesday, I think, Harold told me he thought he knew what they were.”
Charlie tilted his head, surprised. The reaction was disappointing. She’d hoped Harold had confided in him. “He didn’t say anything to you?”
“No, Hutch. If he had any ideas, he kept them to himself.”
“You’re sure.”
“Of course. You think I’d forget something like that?” Harold’s office was visible through a pane of glass. The desk was heaped with paper, disks, magazines, books, and electronic gadgets. Waiting for someone to clear them away, box them and ship them home. “I just don’t know what he was thinking, Hutch. But I can tell you one thing you might not know.”
“What’s that, Charlie?”
“We matched the tewks with the omegas. With the waves. Or at least with the places where the waves should be if they’re consistent.”
“He told me that. So there’s a connection.”
“Apparently.”
And two of them with hedgehogs. Did all the clouds have hedgehogs? “Charlie,” she said, “these objects that we’ve spotted running in front of the omegas: They seem to be booby traps. Bombs. Is it possible that what you’ve been seeing is hedgehogs exploding?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“How can you be sure?”
“Did you look at the pictures from the Heffernan?”
Hutch hadn’t. She’d read the report.
“The explosion that destroyed the Quagmor—Is that right? I keep hearing two different names for the ship—is nothing like what we see when one of the tewks goes off. It’s on the order of difference between a firecracker and a nuke.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just a thought.”
THEY WENT INTO Harold’s office and looked through the stacks of documents. But nothing presented itself as particularly relevant. “Charlie,” she said, “I need you to go over everything he was working on. See if you can find anything new on the clouds. Or the tewks.”
“Okay.”
“Let me know if you find something.”
“Actually,” he said, “we’ve already started.” Charlie was tall and rangy, with sandy hair and clear blue eyes. Unlike most of the researchers who came to the Academy, Charlie kept himself in decent physical condition. He played basketball with his kids on weekends, swam an hour a day in the Academy pool, and played occasional tennis. He lacked his boss’s brilliance, but then so did pretty much everybody else.
“Okay,” she said. “Stay with it. Let me know if anything turns up.” She started to leave but stopped short. “What about the nova patterns, Charlie? Anything new on those?”
“You mean, about the way they line up?” He shook his head. “Maybe if more of them get sighted, we’ll have a better idea. But I think the notion there’s a pattern is an illusion.”
“Really. Why?”
“They tend to bunch up in a relatively small space. When that happens, you can almost always rotate the viewpoint and get a pattern.”
“Oh.”
“And the sightings are probably confined to those two areas not because that’s the only places they are, but because we don’t have that many packages up yet and functioning. Give it time. There will probably be more. If there are, I think you’ll see the patterns go away.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
Harold Tewksbury
. His achievements over an eighty-year career have been adequately chronicled elsewhere. He is one of the fortunate few whose work will survive his lifetime. But that is also on the record elsewhere. What mattered to me was his essential decency, and his sense of humor. Unlike many of the giants in our world, he was never too busy to talk to a journalist, never too busy to lend a hand to a friend. It is entirely fitting that he died helping a neighbor.
Everyone who knew him feels the loss. We are all poorer this morning.
— Carolyn Magruder
UNN broadcast
Sunday, March 16, 2234
chapter 10
Union Space Station.
Sunday, March 16.
TWICE TO THE Wheel in a weekend.
Standing with Julie Carson, the ship’s captain, Hutch watched the people from Rheal Fabrics pack the kite onto the Hawksbill. Eight large cylinders, each more than thirty meters in diameter and maybe half again as long, were clamped to the hull. These were described on the manifest as chimneys. They were, in fact, rainmakers. Four landers had been stored in the cargo bays, along with an antique helicopter whose hull was stenciled CANADIAN FORCES. There was also an AV3 cargo hauler; a shuttle reconfigured to accommodate an LCYC projector, like the big ones used at Offshore and other major theme parks; a half dozen pumps; and lengths of hose totaling several kilometers. A second LCYC was already mounted on the underside of the ship.
The Hawksbill was not part of the Academy fleet; it was a large cargo carrier on loan from a major shipping company which had donated it for the current project with the understanding that they would get all kinds of good publicity. Plus some advantages in future Academy contracts. Plus a tax break.
Like all ships of its class, it wasn’t designed to haul passengers, and was in fact limited to a pilot plus two. Or three, in an emergency.
The workers from Rheal were in the after cargo hold, running a final inspection on the kite before closing the doors. A cart carrying luggage appeared on the ramp and clicked through the main airlock. “Dave Collingdale will direct the operation,” Hutch was explaining. “Anything that has to do with the Hawksbill, you’re in charge. Kellie will be there with the Jenkins. Do you know her? Yes? Good. She’ll be switching places with you so y
ou can help Marge get the rainmakers set up.”
“Which means,” said Julie, “that she’ll be taking the Hawksbill out to play tag with the omega?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you guys want.”
Julie was an Academy pilot, about the same age Hutch had been when she’d taken her first superluminal out of the solar system. She’d had her license for a year, but she’d already acquired a reputation for competence.
Hutch felt a special kinship with her. She was the daughter of Frank Carson, who had dodged the lightning with her during their original encounter at Delta.
She was tall, like her father, same military cut, brown eyes, her mother’s red hair. She also had her mother’s conviction that there was no situation she could not handle. It was one of the reasons Hutch had offered her the assignment. She was facing a long time away with a limited social life, but it was a career-enhancing opportunity and a chance to show what she could do. The other reason was that she could pilot the AV3 hauler.
One of her passengers appeared at the top of the ramp. Avery Whitlock was one of a long line of philosophical naturalists who had come to prominence originally in the nineteenth century with Darwin and Thomas Huxley, and continued with Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, and Esther Gold. He had silver hair, a long nose, and a timid smile. He was a black man, had grown up with all the aristocratic advantages, gone to the right schools, mixed with the right people. But he had a populist talent that shone through his work, and made him the most widely read scientific writer of his era. Eventually, Hutch knew, he would produce a history of the attempt to rescue the Goompahs. Succeed or fail, Whitlock liked the human race and would ensure that it, and the Academy, got just due for the effort it was making.
He looked out at the ship, and Hutch saw his jaw drop a bit. “It’s a behemoth,” he said. “Really only room for two of us?”
Hutch grinned and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Whit. And actually, if you count the captain, it holds three.” She introduced him to Julie, who surprised her by commenting that she was familiar with Whitlock’s work. “I especially liked The Owl and the Lamp,” she said. Whitlock beamed, and Hutch saw again that there was no quicker way to a writer’s heart than by expressing admiration for his work.
Julie had her own views, it turned out, about avian evolution. Hutch listened for a couple of minutes, then pointed out that it was getting late. “Of course,” said Julie.
“You’ll have plenty of time on the flight,” she added.
“I had no idea,” Whitlock said, returning his gaze to the ship, “that it would be so big.”
“It’s pretty much all storage space,” said Julie. “Living quarters are on the top deck.” A line of viewports was visible. “Most of the rest of it has no life support.”
“Incredible. What are we carrying?”
“Some rainmakers and a kite,” said Hutch.
Marge Conway showed up moments later. She was a big woman, a onetime ballet dancer, though Hutch would have liked to see the guy who would catch her in his arms and give her a quick spin. More to the point, she was an accomplished climatologist. The years had caught up with her somewhat since the last time Hutch had seen her. Her hair had begun to show patches of gray, and a few lines had appeared around her eyes. But there was still something feline in the way she got around.
Julie took them on board and showed them their compartments. Avery here, Marge there, sorry folks, they’re a little cramped, but they’re comfortable.
Hutch had been surprised when Marge announced she would make the flight personally. She didn’t seem to mind that it would be a two-year mission. “Once in a lifetime you get to do something like this,” she said, “if you’re lucky. No way I’m sending somebody else.” Her kids were grown, her husband had not renewed, and she’d explained she wanted to get as far from him as she could.
Hutch stayed with them until it was time to leave. This was of course a different kind of social arrangement from the al-Jahani, which had been a small community setting out. The onboard interplay there would be vastly different. Cliques would form, people would make friendships, find others with shared attitudes, and they’d have no real problem.
The Hawksbill would be nine months in flight with three people. At the far end, if they were sick of each other, Collingdale could make other arrangements to get them home. But for the better part of a year they’d be sealed together and they would have to get along. Hutch had interviewed Marge a couple of days earlier, to reassure herself, and she knew Whitlock well enough to have no qualms about him. They should be all right. But it would be a long trip, and she knew they’d be glad to see daylight at the other end.
While they got settled, she repaired to the bridge with Julie. “One critical thing you should pass on to Kellie,” she said. “This ship wasn’t designed to go anywhere near omegas. The architecture isn’t right, and it could draw the lightning. You hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ma’am. I will tell her.”
“She’ll be captain during that phase of the operation. I don’t care what anybody tells her, she will keep minimum range from the cloud. She’ll have it in writing from me long before then, but it’s maybe a little more convincing coming from you.”
“I doubt that,” Julie said. “What’s minimum range?”
“Two hundred kilometers is standard for this kind of vessel.”
“Two hundred klicks. Okay. I’ll tell her.”
Hutch asked permission to sit in the pilot’s seat, and inquired about Julie’s parents. Her father was semi-retired, teaching at the University of Maine and still serving as a consultant to the Margaret Tufu Foundation. Her mother Linda was curator of the Star Museum, which contained the third largest collection of extraterrestrial artifacts in North America, behind the Academy Museum and the Smithsonian.
“Say hello for me,” Hutch said.
“I will.”
“I hope you’re as good as they are.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am.”
It was the right reply. Hutch shook her hand and gazed at the console, at the navigation monitor to the pilot’s right, at the orange ready lamp indicating energy buildup, and she felt again the awesome power of the drive units. Finally, realizing Julie was waiting for her to leave so she could get to her check list, she said good-bye.
She wished Marge and Whitlock success, and strode up the ramp and back into the Wheel.
GREGORY MACALLISTER WAS waiting when she got home. Tor, who was a better chef than she was, had dinner on. Maureen was entertaining Mac by running in circles while a black kitten watched.
MacAllister was a big man in every sense of the word. He took up a lot of space. He was an intellectual linebacker. When he walked into a room, everyone inevitably came to attention. Mac was an international figure, an editor and essayist whose acquaintance with Hutch had begun when they were stranded together on Deepsix.
He’d become interested in the Goompahs and had called, asking whether he could talk with her about what the Academy intended to do on Lookout.
Hutch explained over the pork chops. She told him about the limitations imposed by the Protocol, about her fears as to what would happen if they set the wrong precedent, about the hedgehogs.
When they finished, they retired to the living room and Hutch put up some pictures of the Goompahs. These were long-range, taken from telescopes on the Jenkins and on satellites. There were shots of temples, of the isthmus road and some of its traffic, of farms, of parks and fountains. “Not bad,” Mac remarked from time to time, obviously impressed with Goompah culture. Hutch understood he was impressed because he hadn’t expected much. Hadn’t done his homework. “I thought they were primitives,” he said.
“Why would you think that?” The screen had paused on a picture of three Goompahs, mom, dad, and a kid, probably, almost as if Jack had asked them to pose. A tree like nothing that ever grew on Earth rose behind them, and the images were filled with sunlight.
>
Mac made a face, suggesting the answer should be obvious. “Because—” He looked up at one of Tor’s paintings, a depiction of a superluminal cruising through moonlight, and paused, uncertain. “Well, they look dumb. And they have a fifth-century society.” He glanced over at Maureen playing with her dollhouse. “She has her mother’s good looks, Hutch.”
“Thank you.”
“I guess the question at issue is whether the Goompahs are worth all the fuss being made over them.”
“They’re worth the fuss,” said Tor. “They’re intelligent.”
MacAllister smiled. “That puts them ahead of us.”
Gregory MacAllister was not the best-known journalist of the age, but he was certainly the most feared. Acerbic, acid-tongued, not given to taking prisoners, he liked to think of himself as a champion of common sense and a dedicated opponent of buffoonery and hypocrisy in high places. During the course of an interview the previous evening regarding the drive to make lightbenders available to the general public, he’d commented that while people have the right to commit suicide, he saw nothing in the Constitution requiring the government to expedite matters. “Invisible drunks,” he’d said. “Think about it.” Then he’d added, “The original sin was stupidity, and it is with us still.”
“Maybe it does,” said Tor. “That’s all the more reason to give them a chance.”
Hutch produced a cold beer for Mac, and wine for herself and Tor. Mac took a pull at the beer, expressed himself satisfied, and asked Tor why he thought the creatures were intelligent.
Tor rolled his eyes. “You’ve seen their architecture. And the way they’ve laid out their cities. What more do you need?”
Mac’s eyes usually darkened when he considered the issue of intelligent behavior. They did so now. “Tor,” he said, “the bulk of the human race shouldn’t be allowed out by themselves at night. A lot of them live near parks, fountains, and even spaceports. But that’s assigning worth by reflection.”
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