They shook hands, made small talk, and then Hutch asked about Tor, the sixth passenger.
“He’s out on 21,” said Nick, looking surprised. “They didn’t tell you?”
“No,” she said. “What’s 21?”
“One of the moons. He was supposed to come in this week to be ready, but he’s in the middle of something and, well”—looking at George—“you know how he is.”
George apparently knew, and he glanced over at Hutch as if she should have foreseen something like this would happen. Everybody knows how Tor is.
Hutch sighed. She’d known a Tor once. “Bill?” she said.
“It’s coming in now,” said Bill. “Going out to 21, departure time looks like a little over seventeen hours.”
“Seventeen hours?” said Hutch. She turned toward George. “I’m going to strangle this guy.”
“He wouldn’t have known it would take so long,” said George. “If he’d known, he would have been here. He’s an artist.”
He said that as if it explained everything. It was funny though, her Tor had been an artist, too. Not a good one. At least not a successful one. But they weren’t the same guy. This was Tor Kirby. The one she’d known was Tor Vinderwahl. Not even close.
“Okay, folks,” she said. “We won’t be leaving until about 3:00 A.M. This is a good time to tour the station.”
TOR KIRBY’S BACKGROUND was unclear. Hutch’s data package stipulated only that he was an heir to the Happy Plumber fortune. What he might be doing at Outpost was left unstated. Did they really bring in a plumber from the NAU to keep the water flowing?
The gas giant that was home to Outpost was the sole world in the system moving within a relatively stable orbit. Everything else had been scattered, planets ejected, moons hurled across vast distances. The station had begun as a mission trying to learn what had happened, why everything else had gone south while the big planet had retained its rings and a large family of satellites. Theory held that there’d been a close encounter with another star some twenty thousand years earlier. But finding the candidate had proved more difficult than expected. Nick arranged a simulation of the event for George and his team. The experts thought they had it all down: what the alignment had looked like at the time of passage, how long the event had taken (three years), where the intruder had been. Four of the worlds had been ejected altogether, but they’d been found, drifting through the interstellar void, exactly where they were supposed to be. The others were rattling around the sun. The Hatch had survived intact because it was on the far side of the sun during the height of the action. Their inability to find the other body led to the suspicion that it had actually been a neutron star or possibly even a black hole.
Hutch had seen the demonstration before, and was about to duck out when her commlink vibrated. “Captain Hutchins?” A woman’s voice. “Dr. Mogambo wishes you to stop by his office if you’ve a moment.”
She was surprised to hear that Mogambo was at Outpost.
“He’s directing the geometric group,” the voice explained. Not that she understood what it meant.
Hutch went up to the main deck and turned into the admin area. “Second door on the right,” said the voice. Its owner was waiting for her when she entered. Olive-skinned, dark-haired, wide liquid eyes. Arab blood dominant, thought Hutch.
“This way please.” She rose from her desk and opened an inner door. Mogambo, seated in a padded armchair, signaled a welcome and switched off the wall lights, leaving the room lit only by a small desk lamp.
Maurice Mogambo was a two-time Nobel winner, both prizes stemming from his work on space-time architecture and vacuum energy. Hutch had been a virtual private pilot for him at one point in her career.
He was extraordinarily tall. Taller even than George. Hutch looked up at him, and said hello to his signature ribbon tie. He wore a close-cropped beard, unusual in a close-shaven age. His skin was bright ebony. He had an athlete’s body and a violinist’s long fingers. Hutch recalled the intense daily workouts and his passion for chess.
The smile lasted while he indicated the chair she should take. She eased herself into it, waiting for him to switch the congeniality off. Mogambo saw the world as his own personal playing field. He was brilliant, and generous, and could charm when he wanted to. But she had seen his ruthless side, had seen him ruin jobs and careers when people had failed to meet his expectations. Does not tolerate fools, one of his colleagues had once remarked to her, meaning it as a compliment. But she had eventually concluded that he defined fool as anyone lacking his own brilliance.
“It’s good to see you again, Hutch.” He filled two glasses, came around the front of the desk, and passed one to her. It was nonalcoholic, lemon and lime with a dash of ginger.
“And you, Professor. It’s been a long time.” Almost eight years. But she hadn’t missed his company. “I didn’t know you were here.”
They exchanged pleasantries. He’d been on Outpost for two months, he explained. They were sending missions into several areas dominated by ultradense objects, where measurements of time and space were being taken. “It appears,” he said, “that the physical characteristics of space are not uniform.” He made the remark with his eyes closed, speaking perhaps to himself. “It’s not at all what we’d expected.” The smile faded.
Hutch knew quite well that Mogambo hadn’t invited her up to discuss physics. But she played his game, asked a few questions about the research, pretended she understood the answers, and explained that yes, the Deepsix venture had been unnerving, that she’d been scared half out of her mind for the entire ten days, and that she’d never go near anything like that again.
Finally, he changed pace, refilled her glass, and remarked, a little too offhandedly, that he understood she was going out to 1107.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“To determine whether there’s anything to the Benjamin Martin transmissions.”
“Yes.”
He placed his elbows on the desk, pressed his fingertips together, and leaned forward, not unlike a large hawk. “Eleven-oh-seven,” he said.
She waited.
“What do you think, Hutch?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “If there was something out there when the Benny passed through, I doubt it’s there now.” She suspected he knew about the recent reception, but he wouldn’t know whether she’d been informed or not. And she had no intention of telling him anything she didn’t have to.
He studied her for a long moment. “My thought exactly.” His brow wrinkled. She thought he was going to say something else, but he apparently thought better of it and settled for toying with his glass.
Hutch looked around the office. There was some cheap electronic art on the walls, images of gardens and country roads. As the silence dragged out she leaned forward. “Are you thinking about going out there to take a look? We’d be happy to have you on board.” Actually, she wouldn’t. And she knew he’d not accept. So it was safe to make the offer.
“With the Contact Society?” He grinned at her. You may have to travel with them, but I have more important things to do. “No. Actually, I’m quite busy.” He showed her a row of strong white teeth. “It’s a fanatic’s enterprise, Hutch. But not one without possibility.”
She knew exactly where he was headed, but she was not going to help. “One never knows,” she said.
Something rumbled deep in his throat. “I would like you to do me a favor.”
“If I’m able.”
“Let me know if you actually find anything out there. I’ll be here for a couple of weeks.”