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Three years later, the feeling was still with him. Mark often awoke to find himself wrapped in perspiration-soaked bed sheets, shivering, fists clenched around an invisible control column as he struggled to gain just the few meters of altitude that would have saved his parents. In the aftermath of such episodes, Mark often wished that he had followed his sister’s example. Better a life among friends in the midst of vast emptiness than a life alone among Earth’s teeming billions.

#

Moira was the first to notice the blinking notice on the screen in the den. They had been home ten minutes and were preparing for bed.

“You have a max priority message, Mark,” she said as she entered the bedroom, head cocked as she removed one of her earrings.

“From whom?” he asked with a start.

“Doesn’t say.”

He muttered under his breath as he padded in bare feet to the den. Sure enough, the diagonal red stripe designed to draw instant attention was blinking on the screen. He cleared it and called up the message.

The face was that of no one he had ever met.

“Mr. Rykand, this is Hans Cristobal, duty officer at Stellar Survey Headquarters,” the recording said.

“Please give me a call when you return. It’s important.”

The sober expression and matter-of-fact delivery was enough to shock Mark sober. A call from the survey duty officer could have only one meaning. All that was left was to find out just how bad the news was. Mark punched out the numbers at the bottom of the screen with shaky fingers and waited an eternity until he was looking at the same face as had been in the recording.

“Yes, may I help you? ... Ah, Mr. Rykand. Good of you to call back.”

“What’s happened to my sister?” he asked without preamble.

The officer blinked, not knowing how to react to the direct question. The hesitation told Mark all he needed to know. He had seen that look before, on the face of the police officer that had delivered the news about his parents.

Finally, after a lag that was nearly four times that required to get a message halfway around the world, the officer said, “I am sorry, Mr. Rykand. It is my sad duty to inform you that your sister was killed in an accident three weeks ago.”

“How did it happen?”

“We have few operational details at this time. Perhaps we will know more when
Magellan
docks. All I can tell you now is that we have received official confirmation of her death.”

It was the recurring nightmare about his parents all over again. Mark felt the cold hand grip his heart again, just as it had three years earlier. If anything, it was worse this time. He barely heard his own voice as he asked, “When will you be shipping the body home?”

The duty officer hesitated. When he resumed, his words gave no comfort. “I am afraid there is no body.

We will, of course, arrange a memorial service for Miss Rykand at the time and place of your choosing.

There is also the matter of her standard insurance policy. I believe you are the beneficiary.”

“Damn it, I’m not interested in her insurance. I want to know what happened!”

“As I said, sir, I don’t have that information at this time. Perhaps in a few weeks--”

The screen rattled on his desk as he slammed his fist onto the cutoff plate. He sat trembling before the darkened screen for nearly a minute before Moira came in to see what the noise had been.

“What’s the matter?” she hissed upon seeing his expression.

“Jani is dead.”

“Oh, no, Mark! It can’t be true.”

“It is. That call was from survey headquarters. Sorry to inform you, Mr. Rykand. No, we do not know anything else, Mr. Rykand. Sorry, but the body will not be returned, Mr. Rykand-- ”

Mark’s voice evaporated as his body was wracked with sobs. A moment later, he found himself cradled in Moira’s arms. She stroked his hair and cooed to him softly. It did not help. The old foreboding was back. He could not shake the feeling that this time his loneliness was permanent.

#

Mark Rykand watched the endless procession of vineyards sweep past as the bullet car soared between successive electromagnetic accelerator rings in its usual gravity defying flight. This part of northern Switzerland was especially beautiful with its green hills and whitewashed houses slipping past at an easy 200 kph. Normally he would have been enchanted by the view. Not today. This morning he felt drained -

emotionally, physically, mentally, morally. The human body has only a finite capacity for strong emotion and he had used up his full quota in the previous twenty-four hours. The only trace left was a pale anger, a mere shadow of the rage that had threatened to consume him during the dark hours before sunrise.

The bullet car topped a rise to reveal the blue expanse of Lake Constance in the shallow valley below.

White sails were silhouetted against the dark blue of the lake. The view was a brief one. Soon the car dipped behind a low hill as it followed its line of pylons and accelerator rings. The lake flashed into view one last time. On the far shore, the glass-and-steel pyramid shape that was the headquarters of the Stellar Survey seemed as large as the distant Alps. The building fluoresced gold as early morning sunlight reflected off the eastern flank of the pyramid. A moment later, the lake, its boats, and the pyramid on the far shore were gone as the car hurtled into the black maw of the tunnel that would take it across to the far shore.

Mark’s anger had been unfocussed at first. He had raged at an uncaring universe that had robbed him of his entire family in the short span of three years. Yet, shaking one’s fist at the stars is not very satisfying.

Society taught that when a person dies, someone is to blame. The culprit might be a criminal, the drunken flyer of an aircar, or even the victim himself (if he dies of a heart attack after a life of dissolution).

Until he knew the details of Jani’s death, it would be impossible to assess blame. The more he thought about the duty officer’s refusal to tell him how his sister had died, the angrier he became. How dare they keep such vital information from her only relative?

After a long night spent in mental turmoil, Mark decided to do something. It was easy to ignore a face on the screen, considerably less so when that face is close enough to feel hot breath issuing from an angry mouth. The sun had not risen over the Sierras when he had booked passage on the first suborbital flight to Europe. Even then, nature conspired against him. The eight-hour time difference meant that the first direct flight did not leave until early evening. He had spent the day in anxious anticipation and useless recrimination before boarding a suborbital hyperjet for Zurich.

In less than a minute, the car was out of the tunnel and in sunshine again, climbing the low hills that surrounded the ancient fortress at Meersburg. The bullet car pivoted about its long axis, compensating for the sideways surge of a long sweeping curve to the right. The accelerator ring pylons ran parallel to the shoreline, directly for the gleaming pyramid that towered above the trees. A minute later, the car decelerated swiftly as it entered the pyramid and slid to a halt in the subsurface transport station. Most of the passengers climbed to their feet and waited patiently for the automatic doors to open. When it came Mark’s turn, he moved like a man in a trance.

“Mr. Rykand?” a young woman asked as he exited the car.

“Yes?”

“My name is Amalthea Palan. I am special assistant to the director here. We received your message that you were coming late last night. Director Bartok apologizes for not meeting you personally, but he had an appointment in Toronto today. He asked that I convey his sympathy for your loss. Your sister was a valued member of our family and will be sorely missed.”

“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I won’t be quiet either. I came here to find out how my sister died. I think you owe me that.”

“I understand your concern, Mr. Rykand. Why don’t we go up to my office and discuss it? I’ll be happy to share everything we know, little as it is.”

They rode an escalator up to the main level of the building. The public foyer of Survey Headquarters was one of the eight architectural wonders of the world. It was the largest enclosed space on the planet, exceeding even the ancient Vehicle Assembly Building at the Cape Canaveral Museum. Finished in polished marble, the great expanse reminded Mark of a mausoleum - a thought that he ruthlessly put down as soon as it occurred to him. Around the perimeter were views of worlds the survey had discovered. It being early on Monday morning, the usual small groups of school children were absent and the anti-echo field had yet to be turned on. Mark listened as his and Amalthea Palan’s footsteps echoed back from far overhead.

They took another escalator to a mezzanine level and then an express lift to the 27th level. The director’s assistant ushered him into a plush office with a sloping window that looked out over the lake.

“Refreshments, Mr. Rykand? Coffee, tea, perhaps something stronger?” she asked as she motioned him to a leather settee and then sat opposite him.

“No thank you.”

Amalthea gazed at her visitor.

She saw a well-muscled young man of slightly more than average height with a shock of sandy hair and piercing blue eyes. He would almost be handsome except for the dark bags under each eye and the turned down corners of his mouth. In addition, it looked as though he had not depilated today. “I hope you don’t think me too forward, Mr. Rykand, “but you look as though you haven’t slept in a long time.”

“Could you sleep if it had been your sister?”

“No, I suppose not. If you like, I will have our staff doctor prescribe something when we are through here. We can even provide you with quarters in this building. We keep them for visiting VIPs.”

“Please, I just want to know what happened to my sister.”

She paused, seemed to come to a decision, and then said, “Very well. Are you aware of your sister’s job out in the deep black?”

“She was a scout pilot.”

“Quite correct. As I understand it, the system
Magellan
was exploring this trip is quite dirty compared to most. It had a lot of meteorites and space dust in it. The astrophysicists tell us that this is normal for a new system. Personally, I majored in economics, so I do not really understand these technical things. Do you?”

Mark nodded. One of the courses he had taken in pursuit of his minor had gone extensively into the evolution of star systems.

“Anyway, your sister’s scout craft was transporting several of the ship’s planetologists to a moon when it ran into a piece of orbital debris. The ship was vaporized instantly. That is why we can’t return Miss Rykand’s body to you.”

“There were others killed?”

“A total of eight, according to the report by
Magellan
’s captain. I am afraid that is all we know about the incident until the ship docks and sends down its full logs.”

“Perhaps I can talk with the captain to get more information,” Mark said.

Amalthea Palan sighed and cocked her head in an odd gesture. “I am afraid that is impossible. The ship is still out beyond the orbit of Mars and two-way communications are not yet practical. Speed-of-light delay, you know.”

“When will it arrive?”

“Within a week.”

“Perhaps I can visit the captain then, both to hear what happened to Jani and to pick up her personal effects.”

“We’ll deliver her effects to you. You certainly won’t have to go to the expense of going all the way to orbit to retrieve them.”

“I am rich. I don’t mind the expense.”

“I understand your pain, but there is really nothing constructive you can do in orbit. Captain Landon will not be able to meet with you, anyway. First, there is the mandatory quarantine period and he will be very busy preparing the ship to go out again. I will tell you what. We will forward a copy of the captain’s log entry as soon as we receive it. Will that be acceptable?”

Mark gazed at the pretty blonde opposite him. Her expression reminded him of the professional lamentation of a mortician. Perhaps it was his lack of sleep or the fact that his senses had been stretched taut. Something about her manner told him that she was not telling him the truth, at least not the whole truth. He frowned, and then nodded. “I suppose it will have to do.”

They talked for another ten minutes, after which Mark found himself deftly herded back to the transport station. He climbed into a bullet car headed south and watched Amalthea Palan as she stood on the platform until his car had left the building.

Mark mulled over his next move. If the survey thought that he would go back to California and give up, they were in for a surprise. Someone was to blame for his sister’s death and he was not going to rest until he found out whom that someone was!

Nadine Halstrom, World Coordinator, and arguably, the most powerful single human being alive, sat in the dark and watched the images shimmer in the depths of the holocube. Beside her sat Anton Bartok, director of the Stellar Survey. Beyond the darkened office, a late afternoon storm sent booming thunder across the Toronto cityscape while rain pelted the side of the hundred-story office building that housed the bureaucracy serving the World Parliament.

The record of
Magellan
’s fight with the alien starship and its aftermath ended in a flicker of static as the lights came on in the coordinator’s office. Nadine Halstrom blinked rapidly in the sudden brilliance.

“My God, Anton. So it’s true!”

“Yes, Madame Coordinator. Captain Landon squirted that recording and his report to me via secure comm link as soon as
Magellan
dropped sublight.”

“Where is
Magellan
now?”

“Just crossing the orbit of Mars, inbound. She should be here in about a week.”

“I have to admit to some skepticism when I received your initial message, Mr. Director. After seeing this, I must say that you understated your case. Have you considered the implications?”

Bartok nodded. “I’ve thought of nothing else for the last day and a half, Madame Coordinator.”

Nadine Halstrom sighed. She, too, had thought of little else. “I think we have a major problem here.”