Infinity Beach

by Jack McDevitt

  They’d also included linking verbs with examples of their usage, a few personal pronouns, and the interrogatives who, what, where, when, and why. Eric maintained that the explanations of the latter, which were elaborated by pictures of sample cases, probably would not be understood, but the terms would be so helpful that it seemed worth the effort.

  The package was transmitted realtime rather than compacted, on the theory that celestial technology might not be compatible. It was fifty-six minutes long, and would be repeated every hour.

  Ali called down early during the first broadcast with the news that the scan had stopped. Its total duration had been roughly seventeen and a half minutes.

  Kim thought it would also be a good idea to accompany the transmission with an image of the Valiant. While the package was running, she looked again at the various views which she’d loaded into the transmitter: the microship seen head-on; the microship from above, bathed in the light of Alnitak; the microship in silhouette against a blue planet; a dozen others. Best, she sensed, would be to send a single image.

  She chose finally the Valiant in full sunlight, seen from the port side and slightly below. It was majestic, a lovely vehicle traveling bright skies. It exuded optimism and power, and she hoped it would strike the celestials with the same kind of emotional force she felt when she looked at it.

  “That should get a response,” said Matt, who’d come up unnoticed behind her. “It just demonstrates once again that you need to have PR people along when you do a first contact.”

  Kim grinned at the thought. Flexner’s Theorem. But it was true.

  She was trying to put herself into the heads of the celestials. They had to be motivated, at least in part, by a desire to know what had happened to their ship, which had disappeared so many years ago. Here then were those who knew about the missing vessel, prepared apparently to talk about it. How could they resist that?

  When Ali told her she was clear to transmit, she invited Matt to punch the button.

  “Yes,” he said. “By all means.” And he sent the sunlit Valiant into the void.

  “We’ll hear from them within the next few hours,” she predicted.

  They went back to the mission center where the entire team was gathered to await what most earnestly believed would be the historic response. “You don’t want to be in the washroom just now,” Tesla told Kim.

  Shortly after the first transmission had been completed, Ali informed them they’d been scanned again. “Only for a few seconds,” he said.

  They waited, not talking much, watching the screens for incoming visuals, keeping track of the broadcast status of their own package.

  Not long after it had run a second time, Ali reported another scan.

  And more than an hour later, still another. “Every sixty-three minutes, looks like,” he said.

  The afternoon wore on. Eventually Tesla wandered off to the washroom.

  They had dinner at six. It was quieter than usual and they exhorted one another on the need for patience. Ali, who usually ate in the pilot’s room, dined with them.

  The scans continued through the evening, always separated by sixty-three minutes and seventeen seconds. “We’re probably going to have to wait while whatever’s out there communicates with its home base,” said Matt. “If they have nothing better than hypercomm, that could take a while.”

  That possibility cheered no one. But Kim thought that the present situation was a distinct improvement over the response she and Solly had encountered.

  She gave up at eleven-thirty and went to bed, read for an hour from a collection of political essays, and finally dropped off to sleep. She woke again around three, wandered out into the corridor and made for the washroom. Downstairs she could hear voices in the mission center, Sandra and Eric, and somebody else she couldn’t make out.

  Sandra was laughing.

  A few minutes later she was just returning to her compartment when Ali’s voice crackled over the comm. “Kim, I hate to wake you—”

  “Go ahead, Ali. I’m here.”

  “We haven’t had a response. But there’s something else you should see. Can you come over for a minute?”

  She threw on a robe and crossed the hall to the pilot’s room.

  Ali sat in front of one of the auxiliary screens. As she entered, he turned toward her. “The fleet’s arrived,” he said.

  She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. But that brought a stab of disappointment. “Our fleet?”

  “Yes, indeed. A banshee and a pair of escorts.”

  “Coming this way?”

  He nodded.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Before they get here? About eight hours.”

  “That’s not so good,” said Kim.

  “They appeared on the scopes a few minutes ago.”

  “But they couldn’t have been the source of the scans?”

  “Negative. No way.”

  Well, she thought, at least somebody’s coming to talk to us.

  34

  Silence is deep as Eternity.

  —THOMAS CARLYLE, Sir Walter Scott, 1838 C.E.

  By morning nothing had changed. “To tell you the truth,” Ali said, “being watched by something I can’t see is uncomfortable. I’m glad the banshee’s here. Makes me feel a lot safer.”

  Kim drank her coffee without replying. By now everyone on board knew that the fleet had arrived. Some admitted feeling the way Ali did. But they all knew it spelled the end of the mission.

  The scan warning blinked on, burned steadily for three seconds, and went off. They were always three-second flashes now, still coming on their precise schedule. “You think the banshee’s getting the same treatment?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “I wonder what they make of it.”

  “I’m sure they’re not happy. They’re probably keeping everybody close to battle stations.”

  “Incoming from the fleet,” said the AI.

  Ali glanced at Kim. “Maybe they’ll tell us. Okay, Mac, let’s hear it.”

  “Audio only. Relaying.”

  Kim sank back in her cushions.

  “McCollum, this is the commanding officer of the RE Dauntless.” The voice rumbled with authority. “You’re directed to leave this area immediately.”

  She looked at Ali. “They don’t have any authority out here, do they?”

  Ali made a face. “Technically, no,” he said.

  “So tell him to go harass somebody else. He’s interfering with a civilian enterprise. Here, I’ll tell him—”

  She reached for a headset but Ali held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Kim. I have to cooperate. It would be my license.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said technically they have no authority. But we’re Greenway registry. They have lawyers.”

  “Everybody’s worried about his job,” she grumbled.

  “Well, what do you expect?” he demanded, frustrated. “We’ve had almost a week out here. What’s happening that’s worth making major sacrifices for?” He switched on the speaker. “Captain, we’ll start preparations for departure immediately.”

  “Not just yet, Captain Kassem,” said the Dauntless. “Do you have a Dr. Kimberly Brandywine on board?”

  Ali looked sidewise at her.

  “Go to visual,” said Kim.

  The warship’s commander was tall, blond, with wide-set blue eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache. There was no evidence of flexibility in his rock-hard features. This was not a man with whom she would want to negotiate. “Go ahead, Captain. This is Dr. Brandywine.”

  “Doctor, I’m informed you’re in possession of a piece of government property. Is it with you now?”

  She looked toward Ali.

  He shook his head. No use lying. They’d only board and search. “It is,” she said.

  “Very good. Please use care with it. We’ll be drawing alongside shortly. I’ll expect you to have it ready for me.”

  He sig
ned off.

  “It probably doesn’t matter anyhow,” Ali said. “You can’t give the Valiant back to the owners if they don’t even want to say hello.” He looked subdued.

  “Are we still sending out the vocabulary package?”

  “Every sixty minutes.”

  Everything was coming apart. The Valiant would go into a government laboratory somewhere, search efforts for the civilization which produced it would be misdirected, and Kim would not hear about butterflies and shrouds again during the course of her lifetime. The world would never learn of the sacrifice made by the celestials at Mount Hope. And when we do finally meet, at whatever remote date that might be, it will be as potential antagonists. “Every hour,” she said. “That seems stupid, doesn’t it? Under the circumstances? I mean, we’re not getting any results.”

  “We don’t seem to be.”

  “Shut it down, Ali. We’ve still got some time. Let’s try something else.” She brought up the Valiant package, the Valiant running beneath crescent moons, the Valiant hovering in the sky over the nightside of a world illuminated by vast pools of light, the Valiant fleeing before an exploding nova. Kim had done her work well, and the ship looked by turns regal and exotic and elegant. The only thing it lacked was a clean red-orange flame from a pair of thrusters. “Send these,” she said. “Send them all.”

  Ali passed the instructions to the AI. “Canceling second-phase package,” it said. “Proceeding with Valiant transmission.”

  They watched the console. Lights blinked, and the visuals went out.

  There was a terrace on the second level with an aft view. Nobody was using it, and Kim strolled onto it and stood in the starlight looking at the sky. The banshee and its escorts were back there somewhere, less than two hours away.

  “It was a good try, Kim.” The voice startled her. It was Matt’s, and she read concern in his face. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  His tone changed. Grew optimistic. “You’ve confirmed a major discovery. We know they’re here. And we have an artifact. That’s not a bad piece of work.”

  “We also know,” she said, “that if we ever are able to talk to celestials, what their first question’s going to be.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to explain as best we can.”

  “Killed the crew and took the ship. Good luck to us, Matt.”

  “Kim—”

  “Let it go.”

  He settled into a chair. “They’re scared, Kim. You really can’t blame Woodbridge. He’s just taking your advice.”

  The great star-clouds glowed in the night.

  “Don’t put this on me,” she said. “I’m tired of that game. He has as much information as I do. He knows what happened at Mount Hope. He knows what the Valiant crew did.”

  “But he has more responsibility than you do. If you’re wrong, well, maybe we lose a ship. A few lives. If he gets it wrong, there could be a catastrophe. God knows what it could bring down on our heads. We haven’t really done a study to determine what contact would mean. Despite Beacon, despite all the missions, we never really thought through the potential consequences.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “Let it go. In the long run, we’ll be better off.”

  “You really believe that, Matt?”

  From the adjoining corridor she heard the bleep that accompanied the scan marker. The whatever was looking at them again. Making sure they hadn’t changed course. She wondered what they made of the warships. The presence of the fleet, if it provided comfort to Ali and some of her colleagues, was as likely as not to scare off anything in the neighborhood.

  “You know,” she said, “if we don’t get it right this time, we may not get another chance.”

  “We do what we can.”

  Kim looked out at the stars, at Matt, sitting now with his eyes closed, absorbing pain, doing what he’d always done, trying to make the best of things. In the long run, we’ll be better off. He’d left the door open, and she could see down the passageway, which ultimately led back to the Institute. “I don’t understand,” she said, “why they haven’t responded. I’d think they’d want to talk about the Valiant, if nothing else.”

  He shrugged. “Who’s to say? Maybe they think we’re looking to grab another one if it shows itself. Or maybe just transmitting pictures doesn’t convey the message.”

  “What would?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the message?”

  “Hello,” she said. “We’re sorry.”

  “Then maybe they need to be informed we have the Valiant with us. They don’t really know that—”

  “Yeah.” She thought about it. “You might be right, Matt. All we’ve done so far is send—”

  “—A lot of images. Maybe we need to show them the ship.”

  She opened a channel to the captain. “Ali, when’s the next scan due?”

  “We just had one.”

  “It’s still running at sixty-three minute intervals?”

  “That is correct.”

  “How much time have we left before the good captain arrives?”

  “Hour and a half, give or take.”

  “There’s still time,” she said.

  “Time for what?” asked Matt and Ali simultaneously.

  “To go outside. Ali, can you arrange things so that when the next probe comes, we’re in the shadow of the planet? We’ll need whatever shelter we can get from the sun.”

  Matt didn’t like it, but he could not withstand her determination. “I go with you, though,” he said.

  “You ever been outside one of these things?”

  “Have you?”

  At the other end of the corridor, a staircase ascended to an air lock. Kim and Matt took the Valiant from its display case. They set it on the floor and Kim wrapped it carefully in plastic.

  Ali, speaking from the pilot’s room, tried to dissuade her. Neither of you has any EVA experience, he argued. It’s dangerous. It’s pointless. I’d prefer you not do it.

  Kim thanked him for his concern. “Have to try,” she said. “It’s all we have.” They carried the microship up the stairs into the air lock, selected a pair of p-suits and dressed.

  Ali came to make sure they had everything right. He lectured her some more, but ended by telling her he’d do the same thing if he were in her place. “Might as well,” he said. “We aren’t going to get to come out here again.”

  Then he retreated onto the landing and Kim began depressurizing the lock.

  “It’s good timing, if nothing else,” he told her, speaking now through the suit radio. “Next scan is due in eight minutes. What do you expect to happen out there anyhow?”

  “We hope,” she said, “to shake hands with a celestial.”

  The air lock’s outer door opened. Kim and Matt stepped through. It was like going onto a rooftop at night.

  This upper section of hull was flat and rectangular, bordered by a waist-high handrail. They were still within the ship’s artificial gravity field.

  Kim put the Valiant down, walked to the edge of the roof and looked over the side. It was dizzying. She felt as if she stood atop an infinitely high building whose foundation was lost in the void. The gas giant, with its system of rings and moons, lay off to her left, shielding her from the sun. “What happens if I fall off?” she asked Ali.

  “Nothing,” he said. “You won’t fall. But you would float away. So it’s probably a good idea not to go too close to the edge.”

  Matt stayed in the center of the roof with the Valiant.

  “One minute to the next scan,” said Ali.

  Kim walked over and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. He looked lost. “You want to help?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” She removed the plastic from the microship. Following her lead, he took hold of one side of the vessel, she the other, and they lifted. “All the way,” she said. They raised it shoulder high and then got it over their heads.

  Ali counted down the se
conds. “Okay, folks. We have a light. We are being scanned.”

  She imagined she could feel the tingle of the probe passing through the three floors of the Mac, passing through her, locking on the Valiant.

  “This is not going to be productive,” said Matt. “It feels like a religious ceremony.”

  “It is a religious ceremony.” She juggled it, tried to lift it higher, and almost lost it.

  “Careful,” said Matt.

  “Still scanning,” said Ali. “It’s going long this time.”

  Kim, remembering the scan had been running at three seconds’ duration, began counting. “I think we got their attention,” she said.

  “I hope so.”

  She got to nineteen.

  “Marker’s out,” said Ali. “That’s it.”

  They lowered the Valiant and laid it back on the roof.

  “Kim.” Ali’s voice again.

  “Yes?”

  “It went twenty-six seconds.”

  Matt looked around, maybe to see whether lights had materialized among the stars. But the skies showed no change.

  “Might as well go back inside,” he said. “Nothing more we can do out here.”

  Kim struggled to sit down beside the Valiant. The suit was exceedingly awkward. “I’m going to stay out for a while,” she said.

  “Kim—”

  “I’m okay. I’m just not ready to quit yet.” The air-lock door stood open. Light spilled out onto the roof. “Once we go back in, it’s over.”

  He came and stood close to her.

  She looked out into eternity, past the great ringed globe, past the scattered diamonds of individual stars, past the rivers of light. And she thought of Emily, dead at the moment of triumph.

  Ali’s voice: “We have movement.”

  Terri Taranaka was watching the screens in the mission center. “Kim,” she said, “we’re getting something!”

  Kim struggled to her feet. “Not the Dauntless?”

  “Negative,” said Ali, sounding excited. “The Dauntless is still in our rear.”

  “Which way? Where?”

  “Bearing zero six zero,” said Ali. “Up about thirty degrees.”