Four days out, a panicky message came in from Virgil, who, still wrestling with the loss of the Condor, now found herself looking at two more fatalities. “Put together complete reports,” she told Hutch, specifying the areas she wanted detailed. “Take no further chances. I don’t care what else happens, we don’t want any more deaths.”
But the director stopped short of turning the mission around. Presumably she didn’t feel she had the authority to do that, Hutch decided.
Alyx sat down with her on the bridge one evening to tell her she was having trouble getting past the attack.
“Me, too,” Hutch confessed. It had been the most terrible thing she’d ever seen. Worse even than the army crabs on Beta Pac. It was frozen in her consciousness, something she replayed again and again, feeling the stark revulsion and terror that she was no longer sure had even been present during the original event, when she’d been too busy trying to stay alive to pay attention to her reaction. And there was something else she’d noticed about the experience. “I enjoyed killing the sons of bitches,” she said. “I ripped a few of them open, and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
“I can understand,” said Alyx.
She shook her head. “It’s the first time I’ve ever looked anything in the eye and killed it,” she said.
“I felt the same way. I wished I’d had a gun.”
“It’s just a part of myself that I never saw before.”
Alyx had been having problems, too. She talked about bad dreams. Fangs and retractable claws. “That’s what I remember, the way they just appeared.” And then she said the thing that Hutch would always remember: “It’s like discovering the universe doesn’t run on the rules you thought it did. It’s like standing at a bus stop at night and seeing the guy beside you turn into a werewolf. The angels were terrible. But what really disturbs me is just knowing such a thing could exist.”
During the next few days Alyx came back, and they talked about it again, and Hutch didn’t say much but mostly just listened. Sometimes the conversation went in other directions. They talked about ambitions, men, clothes, what lay ahead. But inevitably they returned to the terrible moments on the ground.
Gradually, Hutch’s own tendency to relive the experience began to fade. And the emotions associated with it fused into a kind of numbness. Something she could package and put away in a locked room that she simply did not visit anymore.
Meantime, she and Alyx forged a strong bond of empathy with each other.
THEY WERE STILL a couple of days away from the class-G when Tor appeared on the bridge. He didn’t seem to have much to say, but simply asked how she was holding up.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You seemed down.”
“I thought everybody seemed a bit down.”
“Touché.” He sighed. “The flight hasn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs, has it?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“I know this has been especially hard on you.”
She shrugged. “It’s been hard on us all.”
“If there’s anything I can do…”
She smiled her appreciation. “Thanks, Tor. I know.”
“Don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I won’t.”
“What do you think we’ll find up ahead?”
“Anybody’s guess,” she said. She had the sense of drifting down an endless track, littered with invisible satellites.
He gazed at her a long moment. “Hutch, I wish we’d had more time together. In the Arlington days.”
So did she. But that was a fresh realization, and she couldn’t entirely submerge a trace of resentment that he hadn’t tried a bit harder to hold on to her. “Me too,” she said in a neutral voice. “My schedule just never seemed to allow much time for socializing.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand.” He smiled, and she thought he was going to do it again, nod politely, excuse himself, leave the room, and not bring it up anymore. Or at least not for several more years, after which he’d show up again unexpectedly, implying that yes, he’d loved her all along, and he wished things had gone differently. Damn you, Tor.
“I just wanted you to know,” he was saying, “that I’ve always thought you were pretty special.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “Thanks. I think you’re pretty special, too.”
“Well.” He looked lost. “I should be going.” He kissed her chastely on the cheek. “If you ever need me, Hutch…” He paused in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment. Then he was gone.
Hutch opened a drawer in her console, fished out a pen, and flung it across the room.
THEY JUMPED BACK to sublight on schedule, at about 48 A.U.s from the central luminary, out where the signal would be passing through the system. Hutch deployed the dishes, and they began the now-familiar routine of searching for the incoming transmission.
George wished they had better communications technology, but seemed mollified when Hutch explained that he had gotten his money’s worth, that the Memphis systems were state-of-the-art, and that there were simply limits imposed by physics no matter how good the equipment was.
The males automatically tended to flirt with Alyx. By now, their affections for one another had deepened, had become something else. But Alyx never lost consciousness of what Hutch was feeling, and consequently tried to maintain an amiable distance.
“Do we know anything at all about this system?” she asked. “Have we even looked at it through a telescope?”
“Maybe through a telescope,” Hutch said. “But that doesn’t tell us much. There’s been no formal survey here.”
Her eyes grew luminous. “You know,” she said, “it’s kind of exciting to be first person into a solar system.”
“It is,” said Hutch. “This mission’s been a new experience for me, too.”
Bill broke in. “Message from the director.”
Hutch nodded, and Sylvia Virgil appeared on-screen. “Hutch,” she said, “I want to congratulate you on your accomplishments. You’ll understand I’m sorry about the losses. We all regret that there have been casualties. But I want to remind you that you are on a historic flight. Which means it is essential to document everything. Remember that the safety of the vessel and its passengers is our paramount concern. I know you’re getting far away from home. But this is a big prize we’re after. You’ll be interested in knowing that the network—that’s what they’re calling it in the media—is huge news back here. We’ll be sending out a few more ships to provide support. Keep us informed every step of the way, and we’ll try to have some of them rendezvous with you farther down the line.
“We’ve already dispatched the Henry Hunt and the Melinda Freestone to the supergiant, based on the possibility that BY68681551”—she read the catalog number of the star system they were in from notes—“is not the actual target. If it turns out that it is, let me know right away, and we’ll change their destination. Hutch, so you’re aware, everything we have in the Outpost area is being turned your way.”
She was worried about lawsuits.
“WE HAVE ACQUIRED the signal,” said Bill.
“Can you see the target?”
“Working on it.”
WITHIN HOURS, BILL found a planet in the path of the transmission. It was an ice world, maybe half again as big as Earth, the sun no more than a bright star in its black sky. Its atmosphere lay frozen on the bleak surface. Huge fractures, several of which would easily have swallowed the Swiss Alps, ran north and south. “Nothing ever lived there,” said Alyx, gazing at the images on the screens.