George was frowning. “It breaks the pattern.”
“What pattern?” asked Tor.
“Living worlds. Worlds with civilizations.”
“The neutron star doesn’t have a civilization,” said Nick.
Alyx, who was becoming an astronomy enthusiast, looked up from an image of a pair of colliding galaxies. “I wonder,” she said, “where the beginning of the chain is.”
Bill appeared on-screen. “I’ve located a stealth satellite. Looking for more.”
“Same type?”
“Keep in mind I can’t see it directly, Hutch. Only the spatial distortion. But nothing so far suggests anything different from the others.”
“Why?” asked George. “What can be here that could possibly interest anybody?” The frustration in his voice was evident. “Nick,” he demanded, “would you put an observation satellite here?”
Nick shrugged. “Not unless I wanted to watch the glaciers move.”
“That’s why they’re called aliens,” said Alyx. “They do stuff that nobody can understand.”
Bill used the sensors to look underground, but he detected no unusual geologic formations, no hint of any artificial structure, absolutely nothing of interest to the mission. There was no evidence that anything had ever happened on this world.
It had two moons, both frozen rocks, captured asteroids, neither more than a few kilometers in diameter. Both were misshapen. One moved in a retrograde orbit. Other than that, they, too, offered nothing of note.
“Maybe,” said George, “it’s just a relay station. Maybe we’re at the limit of the signal’s range from Paradise.”
“May I offer an observation?” asked the AI.
“Go ahead, Bill.”
“The power level in the transmission from Paradise suggests the signal could have gone well beyond this area. If I were to construct a relay station for this signal, it would not be here.”
“My head’s beginning to hurt,” said George. “Bill, do we have a second set of stealths?”
“I’ve been looking. We have no sunlight here to speak of, so they’re difficult to pick up. But I will continue to search.”
“How about if we pull out a short distance,” said Hutch, “and see whether we can hear an outgoing signal?”
WHILE THEY LOOKED, Bill announced that a second ship had arrived insystem.
“Our supplies,” said Nick.
It was the Wendy Jay.
Hutch instructed Bill to open a channel. “Captain Eichner is already on the circuit,” he said. “Shall I patch him through?”
“Yes.” Hutch felt the glow people always do when friends show up in remote places. “I’ll take it on the bridge.”
Kurt wore a black jumpsuit with the Wendy patch on his shoulder. Despite the fact that he’d spent most of his professional career sealed in containers with climate control, he looked as if he’d been under the open sun too much. He had weather-beaten features, a long scarred nose (“dueling incident,” he’d once told her), deep blue eyes that you could swim in, and a smile that was both whimsical and cynical depending on which side of the room you happened to be on.
“Hutch,” he said, “it looks as if we can manage dinner after all.”
“I’m looking forward to it. What did you bring?”
There was a delay of almost a minute. The Wendy was still pretty far off. “Everything we need. What on Earth are you doing out here?”
Hutch made a pained face. “Looking for gremlins.”
He sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. “They tell me you’re caught up in some sort of tracking exercise.”
“More or less. Somebody put up a network of communications relay stations. This is our fourth stop.”
“Somebody other than us.”
“Looks like.”
The smile went whimsical. “So the crazies pulled it off, didn’t they?”
“They’re not crazy, Kurt.”
“I understand completely. But are you going on? Beyond this place?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know that either.” Bill was trying to get her attention. “Just a second, Kurt.”
“We have an outgoing signal,” he said.
“Is it a relay?”
“Do you mean, does it have the same characteristics as the other transmissions? Yes, it does. But it angles off at 133©.”
“This thing really wanders around.”
“Yes, it does.”
Another puzzle. Hutch thanked him, switched back to Kurt, and told him what Bill had reported. “Footprints of another civilization,” she said.
“I guess. So will you follow it?”
“It’s not my call.”
“Whose call is it?”
“George. George Hockelmann.”
“Oh.” And, after a moment: “Who’s he?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
“I understand you’ve lost some people.”
“A shipload. And two from our own passenger list.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Thanks.” She hesitated. “I’ll be asking you to take the remains back with you.”
“I can do that.” He looked at her as if he expected her to say more. Then: “Do you want to continue with this? The mission?”
“You want the truth, Kurt?”
“Don’t I always?”
“I wouldn’t want to admit it to George, but I’m getting kind of fascinated. Somebody planted these things more than a thousand years ago. Except maybe one of them which the Academy tells us is less than a century old.”
“That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Sounds as if they have some sort of ongoing maintenance.
I’d like to see where it all leads.” She was looking at the Wendy’s position on the navigation screen. “When do you expect to get here?”
“Midmorning tomorrow.”
“Want to come with us? On the next step?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could send the Wendy back with the AI.”
“Hutch, I really wish I could.” He shook his head, signifying he wouldn’t do it under any circumstances he could imagine. “But I’ve got this bad ankle that’s been bothering me, and, anyway, you know how Bill gets when he’s left alone. By the way—”
“Yes?”
“I need your help.”
“Sure. What can I do?”
“The Academy wants a sample stealth. They got kind of miffed at Park when he reported he only had a few parts on board.”
“Had they asked him to bring one back?”
“No, but they thought he should have used some initiative. Anyway, they want me to pick one up. I’d be grateful for some assistance.”
THEY CHRISTENED THE new world Icepack and made as complete a record as they could. Bill measured or estimated density, equatorial diameter, mass, surface gravity, inclination, rotation period, and volume. He took the surface temperature at various locations. It was always a couple of hundred degrees below zero. He recorded the various proportions of methane and hydrogen, ammonia ice and water ice.
He also took extensive pictures of the moons, which were sent into mission control and studied relentlessly. Nowhere did they find any indication why the stealths were present.
Meantime Hutch set about selecting one of the units for disassembly.
“Are you sure you wish to do this?” Bill asked.
A red flag went up. “What’s your reservation, Bill?”
“Each change you make degrades the signal. We removed one unit from Point B. And parts of another. Now we propose to remove another one here. Whoever is on the receiving end of the transmission may resent what we’re doing.”
“Whoever’s on the receiving end isn’t going to know about it for a long time.”
“Then let me try it another way: Isn’t there an ethical issue involved?”
“No, there’s no ethical issue. We lost people. We’re perfectly justified in doing what’s necessary to find out what happened. Anyway, they’re a thousand years old. Or more.”