She ached to have the landing party clear of the chindi. Professional researchers might be expected to take this sort of risk, but it was their business. George, Tor, and Alyx seemed like such innocents. “We’re going to lose them,” she told Nick.
He smiled as if he had another funeral-director joke. But then he let it go.
George was scheduled to come back to the Memphis in a few hours, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. It had been impossible to miss the enthusiasm in their voices when they reported the wonders of the chindi. And then the call came, the one she knew she was going to receive.
“George on the circuit,” said Bill.
Even Nick knew.
“Hutch,” George said, “we keep finding stuff.” He went on to describe a dead city in the middle of a plain. “We don’t know what happened there. Broad boulevards, wide green parks, malls. Even a theatrical district. I’d say it was abandoned a few years before the pictures were taken. We figure there’s an explanation somewhere in the record, but we don’t know yet how to access it.” Pause. A guilty pause, she thought.
“We’re trying to figure out how it works. We’d like to get copies of all this if we can.”
“You’re running out of time,” said Hutch.
“Yeah. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about that. We’ve been discussing it, and you said there should be some warning before this thing leaves. I mean, they’ll have to warm up their engines. Right? And there’s the funnel they use to bring up the ice crystals. They’ll want to recover that.”
All old stuff. They’d been over it before.
“What we want to do is to have you keep an eye open for us. If you see something happening, anything at all that suggests it’s getting ready to pull out, give us a holler. We figure we can be back at the exit hatch within an hour and a half at worst.”
Hutch looked at Nick. Nick looked away.
“You’re assuming the funnel’s not disposable.”
“Yes. Well, anyhow, we’re going to hang on here for a bit. Hutch, I know how you feel about this, but this place. We can’t just walk away from it.”
The sense of approaching disaster was thick. “Dammit, George, you’re going to hang on over there until the last minute, aren’t you? And then I’m supposed to come do a rescue.”
“Hutch, I’m sorry you feel that way. But listen, there really should be time. As soon as there’s the slightest indication that they’re getting ready to pull out, we’ll come running.”
“Yes. That’s real good. The first indication is probably going to be a change in velocity. They’re going to start braking or accelerating. Once that happens, it’s over.”
“There’s another possibility. Something we haven’t considered.”
“And what’s that?”
“They know we’re aboard. I wonder if they’d really leave while we’re still here? This whole place seems designed for visitors.”
“I think that’s a reach, George. If it were designed for visitors, it’d be a bit warmer, don’t you think?”
“Hutch.” He sounded genuinely pained. “Please try to understand—”
“How do the others feel?”
There was a pause. Then Tor: “Hutch, he’s right. There’s just too much here.”
And even Alyx: “The place feels safe. I think we’ll be okay.”
“Do what you want,” she said. She severed the connection and glanced up at the Phillies picture. Her image knelt in the on-deck circle with the bats propped against her knee. Idiot, she thought, not sure whom she had in mind.
Chapter 26
NICK AND HUTCH were eating breakfast when Bill appeared on-screen. “I have something interesting for you,” he said. The display switched over to a picture of one of the bottles. Except that it had a curiously unfinished appearance. “This thing was a rock thirty hours ago.”
“The sacks.”
“That’s correct.”
“They’re nanopackages.”
“Yes.”
“So the chindi manufactures bottles,” she said. “Why?”
“Here’s another one.” It was fully formed. And as she watched it fired its thrusters and began to accelerate.
“Where’s it going, Bill?”
They watched it make a few more adjustments. Then: “It’s headed back to the chindi.”
By midafternoon, it had arrived. Doors opened and it vanished inside. A short time later, a second vehicle approached. And a third.
Hutch told George what was happening, that three bottles had gone inside, and he reported no evidence of any activity.
They were just sitting down to dinner—chicken, peas, and pineapple—when the chindi launched a bottle. And then, in fairly quick succession, two more.
“The same ones?” she asked Bill.
“It’s impossible to be certain. But the interval between launches matches the interval between arrivals. It appears that the bottles are taken on board, treated in some way, probably fueled, possibly upgraded, and then disgorged.”
“To do what?”
“Yes. That is quite a good question, isn’t it?”
“Can you tell where they’re going?”
“They haven’t yet lifted out of orbit. When they do, I will try to make an estimate.”
Bill was as good as his word. He was back by late evening. More bottles had been taken on board and launched. Yes, the interval had been the same: two hours and seventeen minutes in each case. The first three had all left orbit and were headed in three different directions. Where? Nowhere he could discern. “Most are remaining approximately in the plane of the solar system,” he said. “But there doesn’t really seem to be any conceivable destination.”
“You’re looking inside the solar system.”
“Of course.”
“What about outside?”
“There’s no point in it, Hutch. These vehicles are too small to be superluminals.”
“The lander at the Retreat might be a superluminal.”
“The lander at the Retreat is bigger. And in any case I have my doubts.”
“Nevertheless, please assume the possibility and check for interstellar vectors.”
“I am doing that now.”
“What are you getting?”
“Near misses.”
“What?”
“Near misses. All three seem to be headed for nearby stars. But in each case, the aim seems inaccurate. They’re going to miss. By a small margin, but they will miss.”
“You mean they’re going to arrive in the boondocks of the system?”
“Yes. By several hundred A.U.s.”
THE CHINDI LAUNCHED more bottles, and after a few days, they had moved out beyond scanner range. Meantime, a steady stream of data was relayed from the chindi party to the Memphis. Hutch and Nick watched the images of glittering towers and carved stonework, of exotic harborworks, of dead cities, of dwellings perched on cliff tops and along glorious shorelines. They saw a temple half-sunk in the tides, and an obelisk still guarding a desert ruin.
Occasionally there was something of more scientific interest: a planet-sized object that Bill thought looked like a particle; a star being gobbled down by a black hole; a pulsar rotating wildly on its axis thirty times a second.
By far the majority of the chindi records dealt with civilizations, and of these the vast majority appeared dead. This was so consistently the case that it was easy to assume they were looking at an archeological mission that had occasionally strayed into other areas. The prevailing opinion at home held that civilizations, technological or not, were limited to a relatively brief lifetime. This view had risen from the fact that of the five known extraterrestrial civilizations (other than human), four appeared to have survived less than 10,000 years. And the fifth showed every inclination of blowing itself up in the near future.