“Don’t worry, Lawrence. That nitwit won’t get anything from me. He doesn’t even know my name.”
“All right. Just keep down. I’ll let you know when he goes back to Rimway. One other thing, I think he knows about the asteroid. The, um, what was it, KL-something?”
“KL-4561,” she said.
“Yeah. Right. My memory doesn’t work too well anymore. Anyhow, if you see anything that suggests he’s headed out that way, let me know. The guy’s a publicity hound, so if he really does have something, I’d be surprised if he doesn’t make the news with it. Okay?”
“All right, Lawrence.”
“By the way, I won’t be answering my personal link. I’m at the Majestic Hotel. If you need to reach me, just leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
He disconnected and sat back in his chair with a look of triumph. “Finally, Chase.”
“How’d you know about the KL?”
“All the large asteroids in the belt have a KL designator.”
“Why’d it have to be in the belt?”
“Most of the asteroids are. I was playing the odds.”
“Okay. Then why did it have to be a large asteroid?”
“It had a name.”
“Not bad,” I said, “for a nitwit. By the way, what happens if she calls back and discovers Southwick isn’t here?”
“I’ve already taken care of that at the desk. They think Southwick is my pen name.”
We did a search for KL-4561. There were a couple of pictures, and some information on its dimensions. It was thirty-seven kilometers in diameter, and it was in the outer main belt, orbiting the sun in slightly more than eight years. He brought up the Flex cover and compared it. “Well,” he said, “one asteroid looks pretty much like another.”
I’d just come out of the shower when Khaled called. So I kept it on audio. “Hi, Chase,” he said. “I was surprised to find out you were here. You didn’t call me.” He sounded genuinely disappointed.
I was still not supposed to be talking to him. Or letting him know what we’d learned. “We haven’t had much free time, Khaled,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “And we’re not going to be staying long.”
“Oh.” He sounded genuinely upset. What the hell was it with this guy? “What are you doing in Hawaii?”
“We’re here for the Mililandi Fest. We’d seen that a lot of artifacts were going to be on display. So we came hoping to find some we could pick up. Alex does stuff like this all the time.”
“You sound kind of funny. Is everything okay?”
I wanted to scream. You sold us out, Khaled. Dumped us in the ocean. Played us for idiots. And you want to know if everything’s okay? “Sure,” I said. “Everything’s fine. I’m just a little tired, I guess. We’ve been on the run. How did you know we were here?”
“I saw something about Alex on HV. I assumed if he was here, you were, too.”
“Okay. Yes, um, listen, I have to go. We’re trying to make a flight.”
“When are you going back, Chase? Any chance we can get together before you leave?”
“I don’t think so, Khaled. I don’t have any free time. Listen, I’ve gotta go. Alex is calling me.”
“All right. I wouldn’t want to crowd you. I know how busy you must be.”
“So long, Khaled.”
Forty-four
The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours.
We picked up a chip in the operational services office that would allow us to locate KL-4561, or any of the other listed asteroids. Several hours later, we were on our way back up to Galileo. Alex was visibly excited. “You have any idea what we’re going to find?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “Best I can come up with is that Baylee inadvertently led some pirates there, and they took off with everything. They left him with the transmitter as part of a deal that he wouldn’t say anything. And they agreed not to kill him.”
“Alex, that doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, there are no pirates.”
“I know.”
“Then why—?”
“You asked for a theory. At the moment, it’s all I have.”
The Belle-Marie was waiting when we arrived. I’d have preferred to spend a few more days in Hawaii and just enjoy the ocean and sunlight. But Alex was anxious to resolve this business, and the luaus would fall pretty flat with Baylee’s transmitter hanging over our heads.
We picked up some food supplies and climbed on board. Larissa was on the other side of the sun, so we had a long ride ahead of us. Alex went back into the passenger cabin while I turned the ship over to Belle and waited for authorization to leave. I couldn’t help being impressed by the amount of traffic handled by Galileo. It had close to four times the docking area that Skydeck possesses, and it wasn’t really enough. Plans were under way to extend its facilities. The home world still handled more commerce than any other world in the Confederacy. It did not have the largest population. In fact, four other worlds surpassed it. But it claimed with some justification to be home to the major advances in the arts and sciences. Of course, scientific advancement had for a long time consisted of little more than taking existing technologies and making them more effective. There just wasn’t much left to uncover.
“Belle-Marie, this is operations. You are clear to go.”
“Acknowledge, ops.” I warned Alex. Belle released us from the dock, and we eased out toward the exit. It looked as if sun, Moon, and Earth were lined up. I wondered if they were getting an eclipse groundside.
We made our jump and surfaced a short time later. “How’d we do?” Alex asked.
“Not bad,” I said. “We’ll need about two days to get to it. We can make it a little quicker if you want, but it’ll be an uncomfortable ride. And suck up a lot of fuel.”
“No reason to hurry, Chase,” he said. “Whatever’s there has been sitting around for more than eleven years. A few hours one way or the other won’t make much difference.”
We relaxed and read the books we’d picked up at the Maui Museum, watched some comedy shows from the library, and kept up a decent workout schedule. Sometimes we just sat and talked. The main topic of conversation was inevitably the Capella, and my reaction to seeing Gabe again. We didn’t speculate much on what we expected to find on the asteroid, which led me to suspect that, despite his denials, Alex had a theory. But he didn’t bring it up, so I let it go.
I’d thought a lot about it, of course. The only explanation that seemed feasible to me was that the whole Larissa thing was a missed communication somewhere. That Baylee had never found the Prairie House artifacts. That when he’d come across the transmitter, it had been by itself somewhere. Probably, someone had found the artifacts thousands of years ago, had sold everything off, and it simply never made the history books. Or, like so much else, everything had simply gotten lost. If Alex had asked me what I expected to find when we arrived at KL-4561, I’d have told him there’d probably be nothing.