Infinity Beach

by Jack McDevitt

  At first she didn’t remember where she was. Hunter was sending again. Blip. Blip. Blip— The pattern now was one-three-five-seven. Inviting the other vessel to send a nine. Did the fact that they’d changed the sequence mean they’d gotten an answer?

  She was back on the couch. Solly had thrown a spread over her.

  “They’ve been at it for about two hours, I think,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “There was a break in midsignal. It continued for fourteen minutes. They may have gone behind something. Maybe that gas giant you mentioned.”

  It was after four A.M. Four hours since they’d picked up the Hunter signal. “Do you want to go back and get some sleep?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I think I’ve had enough of this for one night. How about you?”

  “I’m going to stay with it.”

  “Okay.” He got up, bent over her, kissed her lightly. “I never would have thought they might actually have discovered something but got ignored. Hey, we found a bona fide celestial out there, but they wouldn’t talk to us. Where’d they go? No idea.”

  “Well,” she said, “I hope we get more than this.” She looked at the monitor, which was blinking out the new count. “I can see myself sitting in Agostino’s office with a recording that does nothing but produce blips from the Hunter.”

  Solly stopped in the hatchway. “If nothing else,” he said, “we can prove beyond any doubt that Kane faked the logs. Whatever these transmissions might really be about, none of them were recorded.” He started to peel off his shirt. “Call me if anything happens—”

  Then he was gone and she was yawning, snuggling back under the spread, listening to the radio noises. One, three, five, seven. Over and over.

  But she was awake now. She got up and got some coffee. Mission control was always cooler than the rest of the ship. Life support wasn’t quite correct. “Come on, Valiant,” she said. “Answer up.”

  She drank the coffee. The Hunter group kept transmitting.

  The bearing on the radio signal pointed directly to Alnitak. They’d come out of hyper somewhere near the star, as she thought, probably in the neighborhood of the gas giant. And there they’d met another sight-seer.

  The incoming signal changed.

  One. Two. Three. Five.

  Five?

  Then eight.

  Kim flicked on the intercom. “I hear it,” said Solly, from his quarters. “What does it mean?”

  The system went silent.

  “It’s a new series,” she said. “A little more complicated. Solly, I think they might have got a response.”

  “Why?”

  “Why else veer from a simple series?” She was conjuring up the scene on board: jumping up and down, clapping one another on the back, screaming congratulations.

  “So what’s the next number?”

  “Thirteen,” she said. “If it’s really happening, that’s what they’re listening to right now. Thirteen blips from the other ship.”

  “It would be nice if we had something a little more concrete to speculate with.” But he came back to mission control in his pajamas and squeezed her hand. “I hope you’re right.” The squeeze developed into an embrace.

  She was right. She was sure of it. And in that moment she was supremely happy.

  Solly held onto her and rocked her back and forth while they waited for the next series.

  When it came, she counted eleven. That was all: eleven blips.

  “What is it this time?” asked Solly.

  “Who knows?” she said. “Eleven’s a prime number. But it should be a response to something the other ship sent.”

  “Such as?”

  “One, two, three, five, seven. All primes. Or maybe they sent the first five odd numbers.”

  Solly shook his head and eased himself into a chair. “Kim,” he said, “we don’t really have anything here.”

  “Well, what did you expect?” she demanded, pushing away from him. “We knew it would be a one-sided conversation. Short of pictures, this is as much as we could have asked.”

  Again the system was quiet. They waited and the silence stretched out past fifteen minutes. “Maybe they’re trying to decide what to do next,” she said.

  “What would you do?”

  “Face-to-face. I’d go visual. If that went okay, I’d try for a physical meeting. Send out the lander.”

  Solly nodded. “You think there could be a problem with the visual exchange?”

  She thought it over. “Yes.”

  “For example?”

  “What happens if they’re stomach-churners and they see us reacting? Or if we arouse visceral reactions in them? But at some point you have to try it.”

  The AI broke in: “We have video reception,” it said in its mellifluous voice.

  Solly’s eyes caught her and a world of emotions passed between them. He switched the feed to the overhead display.

  “Enhancing.”

  “On-screen,” said Solly.

  They were looking at the Hunter seal, the ship and the ringed world. After a moment it dissolved to Emily! She sat in an armchair. Kim felt a pang of regret. How young she looked. And she was radiant with emotion. Her hair was pulled back, she wore a loose-fitting white blouse, and she smiled happily at them. “We know you can’t understand any of this, but (not recoverable) hello anyhow. Greetings from Greenway. Can (not recoverable) you?”

  Kim’s heart pumped furiously.

  One by one, each of the Hunter’s crew came forward and talked. Tripley gushed. He was, despite the physical resemblance to Benton, quite unlike him. A softer man, more enthusiastic, more alive.

  Yoshi was gentle, lovely, with luminous eyes and a ravishing smile. She wished her new friends good fortune, and expressed her hope that this would be the beginning of a new era for both their species.

  “I think we’re in business,” said Solly.

  Kim shook her head, wondering how the images would be interpreted by the occupants of the other ship. If they could see them at all. What was the likelihood their equipment would be sufficiently compatible to receive visuals?

  “That’s fairly straightforward technology,” Solly said.

  “They’d almost have to have the capability.”

  And finally Kane. He spoke from the pilot’s room, and his manner was perfunctory but not gruff. He said he was pleased to meet the occupants of the other ship. That remark sent Kim into another round of celebrating.

  “Congratulations,” Solly said.

  Kane asked whether the Hunter could assist. He was somehow the only one of the four who managed to keep the pomposity naturally generated by such a moment out of his voice.

  Kane gazed out of the picture directly at them for about a minute. And then he was gone. The screen flashed the Hunter seal again, and the picture blinked off.

  “End of reception,” said the AI.

  Kim was still standing up, far too excited to sit. “I’d do anything to see the answer to that,” she said.

  “Find the original logs,” said Solly.

  She nodded. “We have to do that when we get back. That’s our first priority.”

  Solly folded his arms and stared at the screen. “I hope Kane didn’t destroy them.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. This is the most dramatic moment in human history. There’s no way he’d have destroyed the record. None. He’s hidden it somewhere.”

  “But where? Why?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

  It was taking a long time for the next transmission to come in. “You know,” said Solly, “one of Kane’s questions keeps coming back to me. Why do you think he asked if Hunter could assist? Is it possible the celestial is disabled? In trouble?”

  “Could be. Damn Kane anyhow. We shouldn’t be caught up in all this guesswork.”

  “I think you should show more appreciation.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If he’d done everything by the book, done w
hat he was supposed to do, this whole matter would have been settled twenty-seven years ago. And you would never have gotten near it. Instead, he’s saved you a juicy puzzle and a chance at immortality. Be thankful.”

  “Visuals,” said the AI.

  Emily reappeared. “Hello again,” she said. “Would you like to come on board?”

  “What’s that all about?” asked Solly. “They don’t expect anybody hanging around out here to speak English, do they?”

  “It’s not the words,” said Kim. “It’s the tone. The nonverbals. But I wouldn’t think a truly alien culture would be able to read our nonverbal cues.”

  The image went to a split screen and Hunter materialized beside Emily. It floated against a river of stars. A dazzling burnt orange planetary ring arced across the sky behind it. The cargo door opened and lights came on, illuminating the interior. Emily’s side of the split screen vanished, and Yoshi blinked into existence in her place, beckoning to the open door so the occupants of the other vessel couldn’t possibly miss the point.

  “That’s not bad,” said Kim.

  Solly pursed his lips. “I’m not sure I agree.”

  “Why?”

  “If we were looking across, say, a few hundred meters of empty space at a ship that was not manned by people, that was in fact operated by God knows what, and they opened a door and invited me in—” He held out his hands to heaven. “Not very likely.”

  “Solly,” she said, pretending shock, “where’s your spirit of adventure?”

  The Hunter repeated its transmission.

  And repeated it again.

  “The whatevers are thinking it over,” said Kim.

  Solly nodded. “Tripley’s pressing his luck. He should leave it alone. Offer once and drop it.”

  A slice of starry sky was visible past the hull of the Hunter. “Solly,” she asked, “how would you think they’re producing those pictures?”

  He thought for a moment. “Easiest way would be to use the feed from one of the scopes.” He glanced at the starfield glittering in their windows. “Then do an overlay of the Hunter just as they’ve done with Yoshi.”

  “Then that’s the way the stars would actually have looked, on that night, from their position?”

  “Probably. Sure.”

  “Would you guess the forward view?”

  “Maybe. That might be the natural way to do it. Why? What difference does it make?”

  “Probably none. But it does give us a course heading during the contact.” She filed the information away in her head.

  “What time of day would it have been when all this was going on?” asked Solly.

  Kim had been keeping track. The first radio signal had been transmitted from Hunter at 11:42 A.M., February 17, 573, Seabright time. It would now be 4:12 P.M. on the Hunter.

  “What they should do,” said Solly, “is just go back to the radio and keep talking. Try to establish a next step.”

  The FAULS screen was blank again. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think the invitations are working.”

  There was nothing more for almost two hours. Then Hunter transmitted the open-door image again, this time with Tripley. But he merely waved to the viewer and made no effort to point at the cargo area.

  “I guess they’re at a standstill,” said Solly.

  Kim exhaled. “I’m surprised.”

  “In what way?”

  “That they’d spent so many years trying to accomplish precisely this and been so little prepared for the event.”

  “You mean the open-door pictures?”

  “I mean the whole thing has a kind of spontaneous feel, doesn’t it? As if they were all taken by surprise. It makes me think they never really expected to succeed.”

  “What should they do?” asked Solly.

  “The bottom line is that Emily and her friends can’t do very much. And they need to recognize that. They aren’t going to be able to master a new language; they can get only so far with number games; and it’s obvious that establishing a sense of mutual trust with, say, giant spiders is going to be a tricky business. I’d say it would take a team of specialists to get much beyond saying hello.”

  “Therefore—?”

  “Therefore they should concentrate on one thing: establish a date for a second encounter. If they could do that, they’d have achieved as much success as anyone could wish.”

  “How would you go about it?”

  “They’ve got a planet handy. They could use the planet to make a date. Show them, say, a couple hundred revolutions. Six months. We’ll be back in six months. The meaning would be plain enough.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Solly said. “Too bad you weren’t with them.”

  She drew up her knees and put her arms around them. Emily was with them.

  Solly was showing signs of frustration. “How about some breakfast?” he suggested.

  “No, thanks. I want to stay here.”

  “You won’t miss anything. I don’t mind getting it.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not hungry. Really.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to exercise my prerogative as captain and insist. This might go on for another twenty-four hours or so, and I don’t need you getting sick out here.”

  She looked at the status panel. At the glowing lamps. “All right,” she said.

  He brought out two plates of ham, biscuits, and pineapple slices. Kim ate quietly, subdued, annoyed at the apparent inability of the Hunter to create an effective strategy. Solly suggested the celestials might have been scared off by the open door. Or that they might have a cultural bias prohibiting them from befriending a different species. Or—

  “How could that happen?” she asked. “These critters have spaceflight. Since they’re in the vicinity of Alnitak, they must have FTL. Surely they wouldn’t be afflicted with preconceptions about another sentient species.”

  “Maybe they’d have a religious problem about us,” he said. “Maybe we’re not supposed to exist, and we’ve trashed a theological system.”

  “I don’t think you’d find that kind of thinking among space-travelers.”

  “Really? We had Christians and Muslims arguing all the way out to Carribee. Even the Universalists are inclined to look down on anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the official theology.”

  “Which is that there is no official theology.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The same tendency is there. I don’t know. Maybe the celestials don’t come in a lot of packages the way humans do. If there’s basically only one type of critter, it would never have been required to deal with anything different.”

  Solly slowly ate through his breakfast, let his head drift back, and fell asleep. After an hour or so he woke up, went to his room, showered, and changed. When he came back he looked neater but still fatigued. “I can’t believe they’re just sitting there doing nothing,” he said.

  “Maybe they’ve launched the lander,” suggested Kim. “It’s possible they’re trying a meeting.”

  “No. There’d be radio traffic. The Hunter would need to tell them—show them—what they wanted to do.”

  During the course of the morning the screens remained quiet. Solly and Kim went over the same ground again and again. By midafternoon Kim thought the quality of the signal had probably disintegrated to a degree they were simply not acquiring it anymore.

  “It’s possible,” said Solly. “But not likely.”

  They went down to the rec room and worked out. Neither said much and when they were finished, had showered and changed, Solly asked whether she thought it was over.

  “Probably,” she said.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We listen some more. If we don’t hear anything, we move to another intercept site and listen to it all again. That’ll allow us to take a second bearing and pin down their location.”

  “How long do we stay here?”

  The Hunter had been in the Alnitak area almost two days. “Let’s stay
put through midnight tomorrow. If we haven’t heard anything by then, we’ll clear out.”

  That evening he came to her with a tenderness and a passion that overwhelmed her. “I’m glad you got what you wanted,” he told her after the first flush of lovemaking had passed. “We don’t have all the details yet, but at least we know it happened.”

  “Kiss me, you fool,” she sighed.

  The night filled with laughter and a few tears, and she didn’t know why, couldn’t explain the tears either to herself or to him, but just let them flow.

  “I’m in bed with an immortal,” he said.

  And she knew it was so. Eventually they’d sort everything out, get the answers, learn what had happened to Emily and find out how Yoshi ended up in a river and what had blown the face off Mount Hope. It was just a matter of time, and kids a thousand years from now would be learning how to pronounce her name.

  She had never, ever, felt more alive than she did then, and she attacked Solly with a will, laughing when he finally slumped back exhausted, pleading with her to give him a rest.

  Somewhere around five A.M., lying on her back with Solly’s left arm thrown over her, she decided that she would keep him, she would do whatever she had to. Moreover, Solly was part of this whole marvelous event and she was going to hold onto all of it. They had been wedded by the sheer joy of the experience. The ceremony, when it came, would be only a recognition of what had happened in this most glorious of starships.

  They slept late in the morning, ate, watched a VR, and wandered down to mission control, where the FAULS screen was still blank. They had gone more than twenty-four hours without any further interceptions. It now seemed clear, for whatever reason, that the party was over. But they waited anyway. They hurried through dinner, anxious to concede the issue, to be off to their next station, to outrun the radio transmissions, to race across the void and jump back into realspace and take a new bearing on Alnitak.

  “But I’m not hopeful,” she said, down considerably from the previous day’s high. She was thinking of the old axiom that if you want people to believe extraordinary claims, you must present extraordinary evidence. Did she have extraordinary evidence?