Firebird (37 page)

“Some of us look pretty good right now,” said Alex, his eyes straying from Shara to me and back.

“Careful,” I said. “I wonder what Audree's thinking right now, with you locked away with two women.”

“She trusts me,” said Alex.

“And well she should,” said Shara. “I'm happy to be traveling with a man of such high moral character.”

We talked about whether either sex is smarter, agreeing that women generally communicate better. (Consensus was, as best I can recall, two to one.) We discussed politicians, and were not surprised that nobody had an unbridled enthusiasm for anyone currently holding high office.

And we wondered what life would be like if we possessed the Mute telepathic capability. Can't lie, can't hide your feelings. And, of course, the word
diplomacy
probably doesn't even exist.

And eventually we got around to God. I was surprised to learn that Shara is a believer. “Not in the angry, judgmental God that they teach in some of the churches,” she said, admiring the image of the Hourglass Nebula, which Belle had put on the auxiliary screen. (Belle routinely put images on-screen of what we'd see if we were actually traveling through normal space. Of course, nothing was visible through the
Belle-Marie's
ports.) “But I just can't believe the physical laws accidentally allowed something like that to happen, or
us
to happen for that matter, or that derived quantum mechanics. I know the basic theory, the explanation. But I can't buy it. If there were no God,” she said, “I just can't see there'd be
anything.”

Alex's opinions on the existence of a conscious functioning creator tended to change with his mood. “It's just the
size
of it all,” he said, studying the Hourglass. “The notion that somebody could be behind that just seems to me”—he hesitated, searching for a word—”seems forced. We have a tendency to see design everywhere. And people desperately want to believe in a compassionate power higher than themselves. The possibility that we're all just accidents of nature is, for most of us, simply unimaginable.”

As for me, I've always found it much easier to be a believer when I'm adrift among the stars. It's easy to think there's an Artist God when you look at the Hourglass Nebula, or, from orbit, at forests and oceans. It's when you get close and see the violent side of nature, watch animals dismembering and swallowing one another, look back across humanity's long history of warfare and murder and general decadence, that it becomes hard to take any of it seriously.

We arrived in the target area, checked our position as best we could, and immediately began scanning.

Just as it was impossible to know precisely where the Alpha vehicle would arrive, so were we unable to determine exactly where
we
were. We could triangulate our position from various stars and confirm that we were at a given point, but that point took in a lot of empty space. It was a very
big
point. You can move a great distance out there without changing the apparent angle to any star.

That was one problem. Another difficulty arose from our inability to calculate exactly
when
the event would occur. “I think I have it within a week or so,” Shara had said before we left home, adding that she was sorry, but that it just wasn't possible to get better precision. Consequently, we'd timed things to arrive a week early. And we were prepared to stay more than a week beyond the target time. So we would be there three weeks altogether if nothing happened.

We also knew that, because of the size of the target area, the object might arrive, cruise through the neighborhood, and leave without our ever being aware of it. What were the chances of that?

“Maybe one out of three or four,” said Shara. “But those are decent odds.”

I wasn't sure how best to position us. We had arrived near the rear of the search area, which is to say that if and when
Alpha
showed up, we'd be trailing her. But it wasn't easy to remain stationary relative to the search area. If I attempted that, and
Alpha
appeared well in front of us, we'd need considerably more than a few hours to accelerate sufficiently to overtake it. If we simply went to a cruising speed, and it jumped in well behind us, we'd be faced with another set of problems. Best was to stay back and chase it down from behind.

So we settled in. I braked until we were barely moving, on a course that ran parallel to the one recorded for
Alpha
in its last appearance. In 1256.

There was nothing further to do except sit around and wait. We talked some more. We read. We played games. We watched shows. One of the more entertaining diversions was to pull a classic out of the library, say,
Markazy,
or
Hamlet,
and play it with our avatars in the title roles. I loved watching Shara as the malevolent wife in
Markazy,
who, at the height of the Rebellion, murders her husband (Alex, of course) for political reasons, then discovers that she loves him.

In
Hamlet,
if you'll allow me, I was brilliant as Ophelia. And Alex was utterly out of character in the lead. Not that the performance was weak, but it was hard to imagine him so indecisive. He looked great, though, in his Danish wardrobe.

We concluded the first week, as expected, with no sighting. Though Alex remained outwardly calm, I knew he was excited. Every time Belle broke into a conversation, I could see his eyes react. But it was always routine stuff. Recommendation that forward thrusters receive special service when we got back. A hitch in the rotational capability of one of the outboard scopes. Permission to make a change in the lunch menu.

Shara was emotionally invested also, and I'll concede that I dreamed of what it would be like to rescue a few people from a centuries-old flight. I rehearsed the scene constantly. Hello, Welcome to 1434. I bet you're glad to be off that ship. Everything's okay now.

“They won't believe us,” I said.

Finally, on the eleventh day, Belle delivered the message we'd been waiting for:
“We have company.”

A marker appeared on-screen.

Shara smiled modestly. The resident genius.

“Any chance it could be somebody else?” asked Alex.

“Who else,” I said, “would be cruising around out here?”

“Range seventeen hundred kilometers.”

Shara and I took the seats on the bridge. Alex stood in the hatchway behind us. “Can we see it?” asked Shara.

The marker brightened.
“It's too small to get an image.”

“What's her course?” I asked.

“Still working on it.”

I sat listening to everybody breathing.

“Parallel to ours.”

Shara literally squealed. “Beautiful.”

“It is, however, pulling away.”

“Okay,” I said. “No surprise there. Alex, grab a chair. Shara, buckle down.”

Shara got up. “You sit here, Alex,” she said. “This is your show.” She squeezed past him, back into the cabin. Alex said thanks and took her place. I switched over to manual and, when everybody was ready, began to accelerate.

Shara, speaking through the comm system, said something like
whoa. “I never felt anything like that before.”

“Sorry. It has a big lead on us. Belle, did you see it actually
appear?”

“Negative, Chase.”

“So,”
said Shara,
“we have no idea how long it's been here.”

“It can't have been here long. I would estimate no more than a few minutes.”

“Chase.”
Alex's voice.
“How long will it take us to catch them?”

I passed it over to Belle.
“Two hours, thirteen minutes,”
she said.

“That may not be good enough, Chase. How about a jump?”

The problem with the star drive, of course, is that it's not very precise. “We're in too close, Alex. We'd probably find ourselves farther away than we are now. And maybe in front of it somewhere. Belle, is it under power?”

“I can't tell from this range, Chase.”

“Try to contact her,” Alex said.

“Do it, Belle.”

“Complying.”

We waited. I looked out through the wraparound, as if I might be able to pick the thing out of the darkness with the naked eye. Of course there was nothing.

“Negative,”
said Belle.
“No response.”

Alex exhaled and sat back, saying nothing, but I could feel the tension.

“How long,”
Shara asked,
“before we can get an image?”
She was watching on the cabin display.

“We're still losing ground. That'll stop in about thirteen minutes, and we'll start to close the gap. After that, it looks like maybe another twenty or thirty minutes before we can get a look at it.”

That pretty much ended the conversation. Alex sat with his arms folded, not unlike a frustrated parent. Shara asked me to be sure I relayed any images back to the cabin display. Then she, too, went quiet.

I stared at the auxiliary screen. The marker continued to blink. On and off. On and off.

What are you?

The pressure of acceleration pushed us deep into our seats. “How about we move a bit faster?” said Alex.

“We'd burn too much fuel.”

“Burn it.”

“We could wind up stranded out here, Alex.”

“Maybe we could just turn it up a little?”

“If we go roaring after it, we'll have a major braking problem at the end. Let me handle it, okay?”

I'd have preferred to have him in the cabin.

“I'm sorry,” he said, after several minutes of stony silence.

“It's okay.” We weren't going to get a second chance, but there was nothing we could do that wasn't being done.

Belle knew when tc keep quiet. She said nothing as the minutes ticked off. Until, finally, she could give us some good news:
“Chase, we have begun to close on the target.”

“Thank God,” said Alex. “Next time we do something like this, we need to rethink the strategy.”

“We need more than one ship,” I said. “The area's too big.”

“I'm sorry,”
said Shara.
“It's my fault. I should have realized—”

“It's not anybody's fault, Shara.” Alex's voice was tense. The silence returned. Alex remained restless, adjusting his position, adjusting it again, checking the time.

“Switching to cruise,”
said Belle.

The pressure generated by constant acceleration went away.

Shara appeared in the hatchway. “How we doing?”

The blinker shut down, and we were looking at a dim light on screen. A ship at the edge of vision. Belle tried to enhance the image, but nothing changed.

Gradually, it became
several
lights. We were able to make out a hull. “Still has power,” said Alex, “after two thousand years. Incredible.”

The hull acquired some definition.
Alpha
had twin thrusters. And a blunt prow.
“Large vehicle,”
said Belle.

The lights continued to separate. Some were interior.

And, moments later, Belle was back:
“Ninety minutes to intercept.”

The bridge was lit up. As were a double line of ports, from front to rear. We could see movement inside.

Belle's voice:
“Incoming traffic.”

Alex gripped my wrist and squeezed. “My God,” he said. “We've done it.”

My heart was racing. “Put it through, Belle.”

We got a voice, a male, speaking a strange language. But the desperation was clear enough. Code five. Require assistance. Help us, please.

“We're getting a vid transmission, too, Chase. But the system is not compatible.”

“Can you make an adjustment?”

“Trying.”

“Open a channel.”

“Done.”

“Hello. This is the
Belle-Marie.
I know you can't understand me, but we will endeavor to assist.”

“Chase, the language is Standard.”

“No, it isn't.”

“It's a two-thousand-year-old version.”

“Oh.” I would never have known.

Behind me, Alex was climbing into a suit. Shara was digging hers out.

“Can you translate?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Tell him to stand by. We're coming.”

Belle did, and the voice responded, sounding simultaneously relieved and despondent. Belle translated:
“He's saying he's lost.”

“Okay. Tell him we'll help.”

“I already did. He says they have no control over the ship.”

“Tell him again. Ask how many people are on board.”

Belle asked him, but as she finished, the ship began to fade. The reply was broken up by static. She repeated the question.

More static. It was hard to make out what he was saying.

“Can't hear him,”
said Belle.
“I think he said twenty-seven.”

The lights in the ports dimmed.

“Tell them,” Alex said, his voice tense, “that we'll be there with help in a couple of hours.”'

“Alex, I can't lie to—”

“Damn it, Belle, tell them what I said.”

But it was too late. The lights went out, and the ship faded into the dark.

“Son of a bitch.” Alex threw his helmet back into the cabin. “Damn damn damn.”

And I understood what he meant. It would be two hours
their
time.

Shara got a bottle out of the cabinet and poured drinks for us. “Just for the record,” she said, “we might not have caught the thing, but this has been a very good day. Now we know that the math works, and we have a record. Maybe we can get some help on the next run.”

“I hope so.” Alex looked down into his glass. And raised it. “Next time,” he said.

PART IV

Antares

THIRTY-FOUR

Life is a casino, baby. You make your best call, lay your money on the table, | and hope. It's all you can do; you can't do no more.

—Agathe Lawless,
Sunset Musings
, 9417
C.E.

On the way back, Shara reviewed the math for the next target, which we labeled the Antares Object, not that it was close to Antares, but it
was
in the general direction, though considerably farther. “No matter how we do this,” she said, “it's essential that we pick it up as soon as it appears.”