“If we get lucky, maybe only a couple of days.”
“That’s the estimate they were tossing around back at the Academy,” said Pete. “When I was out here on the Benjamin Martin, the signal was damned near impossible to find. What if we don’t get lucky?”
Four dish antennas unfolded from their holding tubes and flowered above the hull of the Memphis. Swivels turned slowly until all were fully expanded and directed toward the neutron star. In Hutch’s mind, the Memphis came to resemble an old eighteenth century ship of the line under full sail.
“Approaching search area,” said Bill.
“There are no guarantees,” Hutch said. “There’s just too much space out here. We can’t cover everything. But George has done a pretty decent job with the sensors and the communications equipment. We also have some satellites to put out. They’ll help us. I think, if it’s here, we’ll find it pretty quickly.”
Bill took them through the maneuvers required by the opening phases of the search pattern with deliberation. Changing directions with the antennas deployed was like trying to turn a flatbed vehicle loaded with bowling balls.
Hutch considered retracting the dishes at the end of each pass, but Bill ran a simulation and they concluded it meant too much wear and tear. “This system,” the AI said when she was alone, “requires some improvement.”
They had a couple of false alarms. The neutron star threw off electromagnetic transmissions in all directions. They were in the process of trying to match several of them with the target signal when Bill announced a transmission from the Condor.
“We’ve found two more worlds,” Preach said, answering George’s question. “But neither is in the biozone. They’re both close, but off the money. One will be a desert; the other’s a chunk of ice and rock.
“By the way, did I tell you Safe Harbor’s moon is almost a quarter the size of the planet? We can make out an atmosphere. It looks thin, but it’s there.
“Wait a second, Hutch.” He turned away, listened to someone standing off to one side of the imager, and looked surprised. Hutch saw him say, You’re sure?
There was more nodding, more conversation. He looked out of the screen at her. “I’ll be right back, Hutch,” he told her. Then she was looking at his empty chair.
He was gone a couple of minutes. When he reclaimed his seat his blue eyes were gleaming. “There’s a lunar outpost of some sort. Hutch, I think we’ve struck gold.”
Hutch relayed the transmission throughout the ship, and a few moments later heard cheers. For his part, Preach was getting slapped on the back, and somebody thrust a drink into his hand. A coil of paper spiraled through the air.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, “when we have more.”
WITHIN A FEW minutes the excitement had given way to a sense of having been left out. “That’s where we should have gone,” Nick told Hutch. “We backed the wrong dog.”
They wasted no time settling whose fault it was. “I thought this was our best bet,” George said. “We knew that whatever’s here is currently active. I really didn’t think they’d find anything over there.” He looked stricken. “You’re right,” he told Herman. “I blew this one.”
While they were all feeling simultaneously ecstatic and sorry for themselves, one of the dishes tore loose from its mount. Hutch took a go-pack and went outside to do repairs, but she’d just begun to apply the patch when Bill informed her there was another transmission from the Condor. “Allcom,” she said. That would make it available to her passengers, as well.
Preach was visibly excited. “There’s vegetation on the planet,” he said. “And we can see structures. Cities. Canals, maybe. No sign of anything in orbit yet. The moon has water, I think. But it’s probably not a living world.”
She finished up, climbed down, and went inside. They were all waiting for her. They looked as if they’d decided enough was enough. “How long would it take us to get there?” George asked.
“A few hours. Is that what you want to do?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course we are.”
Herman looked as if he’d just lost heavily at an all-night card game, Alyx gazed intently at Hutch as if she’d taken them to the wrong place, Tor stared into that middle distance he examined whenever things went wrong. Even Pete, who maybe should have known better, was wearing a frown. Only Nick seemed unfazed. But, she thought, dealing with bad times was Nick’s specialty.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll get started.”
Bill’s image appeared on an auxiliary screen directly in her line of sight. That meant he was offering her a chance to talk to him privately. But it was getting late, and she was tired. “Yes, Bill,” she asked. “What is it?”
He was wearing a beret and smiling. Trying to cut through the general gloom, maybe. “We’ve got a hit,” he said.
George raised a fist. Alyx fell into Herman’s arms, and Hutch witnessed a major-league mood change. They shook hands and banged one another on the back. She got a hug from Tor. He winked at her afterward. “Thought I’d take advantage,” he said.
So they decided to stay because who knew where it might lead, and, anyway, they could only be second-best at Safe Harbor and did anyone know who captained the second mission to the Americas? (Hutch thought it was Columbus again, but she wasn’t sure enough to say anything.) She broke out the champagne, and they raised a glass to Bill, who smiled shyly, took off his beret, and said modestly that he was only doing his job.
THE SIGNAL SEEMED to be coming directly out of 1107.
“How much did we get?” asked Hutch.
“Only a couple of seconds. But I know where it is. We’ll be locking on to it again in less than an hour. Then we can follow it to the source. If you want.”
“What’s it look like?” asked George. “The transmission?”
“Can’t read it. But there is a pattern. Same as the original intercept.”
“Will you be able to translate it if we get a larger sample?”
“There’s no way to know. Maybe. You’re assuming it has a meaning.”
“How could it not?” asked Alyx.
“It could be a test message,” said Hutch. She sent a message to Preach, informing him what had happened. At about the same time another transmission came in from the Condor.
“Big news. We’ve picked up the 1107 signal. It’s aimed directly at Safe Harbor.”
He signed off, and Bill came back. “Captain, they transmitted a data package on the reception.”
“Yes?”
“Configuration doesn’t match. And the signal is stronger on its arrival at Point B than it should be.”
“There are other transmitters here,” said Hutch.
“I hardly see that it can be otherwise. The numbers suggest they are blending transmissions from three sources. Presumably all are in orbit around the neutron star.”
IT WAS A night for losing sleep. Bill rediscovered the signal and rotated the telescopes toward the source. “Nothing visible,” he said.
Hutch rotated the Memphis, and they moved closer to the dead star, homing on the transmission. Twenty minutes after they’d started, Preach was back. Looking shaken.
“We’re in orbit around Safe Harbor,” he said. “And I have bad news. It looks as if we couldn’t have picked a less appropriate name. The planet is hot. This is a dead world. Radiation levels are high. Lots of craters. Ruins everywhere. Looks as if they’ve had a nuclear war down there.” His image blinked off, to be replaced by a water-filled crater. Wreckage ringed the perimeter. The land was gray and black, sterile, rocky, blasted, broken only by occasional brown patches of what might be vegetable growth.
“It’s like this almost everywhere.” Images flashed by. Rubble, mountains of debris, great holes gouged in the earth. Dead cities. Here and there, buildings stood. Often only walls or foundations. An occasional house.