I had no sense of the passage of time. When I was conscious again, it was Day 62. I was more than four and a half billion miles out, well into the Kuiper Belt. Minetka lay some eighty million miles ahead: time to start braking.
To do that, I had to turn the ship around and point the tubes forward. I checked the scopes first to ensure there was nothing immediately ahead. Turning the Excelsior at its current velocity was the most dangerous part of the flight, because it brought the ship out from behind its shield and exposed it to whatever might lie in its path. When you’re traveling at 864 miles per second, it doesn’t take a very big pebble to make a very large hole. The turn would require four minutes and eleven seconds. Once it was completed and the engines had come online again, the danger would all but evaporate because anything that posed a threat would be blown away.
The Kuiper Belt, of course, doesn’t have anything as specific as a boundary. It constitutes a vast ring of dust, ice, and rocks orbiting the sun at a range of approximately three to five billion miles. Thousands of the rocks are more than a hundred miles across, several with a greater land surface than North America. Minetka ranks among these.
I had to delay the turn for about half an hour because the scopes were picking up light debris in our path. When it was clear, I swung the ship around and started the engines. We began to decelerate.
I informed Liberty that the maneuver had been successfully completed. The response, “Copy that, Excelsior,” arrived thirteen hours later.
The Coraggio’s last report had been to signal completion of the same turn. She had gotten this far.
If you read about the Kuiper Belt, it sounds crowded: millions of rocks and ice chunks constantly bumping into one another. But seen through the scopes, it was strictly empty sky. I’d seen some of the images Lucy sent, so I wasn’t surprised. And I can’t say I was disappointed, because I didn’t want to get anywhere near a collision. Still, I’d have liked to see something. In any case, I didn’t go back to sleep.
Now and then I got a blip on my screens. But of course I never saw anything that was close. We were moving too quickly. Anything nearby became, at best, a blur. By then my velocity was down to 414 miles per second. Crawling along.
And finally it was time to send Lucy a radio message. Because I had no way of knowing where the Coraggio might be, my best chance was a general broadcast. “Lucy,” I said, “this is Sara. I’m in Excelsior. Do you read me? Are you there? Please respond.”
I got a lot of static back. After about twenty minutes, I tried again. And continued to resend at scattered intervals. If she was close to the plutoid, she’d hear it.
I’d long since stopped asking Liberty if the situation had changed, if they’d heard from Lucy. I remained coiled in a silence disturbed only by the rumble of the engines. As long as Morris had been there, at the other end, I hadn’t felt so alone. Now—
I looked out at the sky, illuminated by countless stars. And at the sun, which at this distance was no more than a bright star itself. And I wondered whether anyone else, ever, would come out here and look around. I tried calculating the odds, but there were too many unknowns. Human beings are always talking about instincts. Instincts are of course evolutionary impulses left over from a time when people hung out in jungles. Theoretically, I don’t have any of those. Still, while I couldn’t justify a conclusion one way or the other, it seemed unlikely that anybody else would follow. Something buried deep in my software assured me that the great experiment was ending.
When two hours had passed with no reply, I notified the space center that my first attempt to communicate with Lucy had failed.
Midway through Day 64, I was down to 216 miles per second. I scanned the area in all directions for any sign of the Coraggio, but there was nothing other than an occasional rock.
I adjusted course, swinging gradually to port, putting the Excelsior onto a broad curve. When, finally, I encountered Minetka, I’d be moving alongside it at a matching velocity.
I tried calling Lucy a few more times, every hour or so. But nothing came back, and eventually I gave up. She was wrecked, I decided. Maybe she’d gotten careless, or unlucky, and collided with something.
A few minutes past midnight, the control system signaled that braking had been completed. I rotated the ship again, putting the shield back up in front, and continued looking for Minetka. At about 0300, the scanners located it.
I like visuals, so I put it onscreen. At first the plutoid was just a blinker. Then, gradually, it became a pale light, and continued to brighten as I drew closer. I knew it was more ice than rock, about 1700 miles in diameter, a moderately lopsided sphere, tumbling as much as rotating. The surface consisted of varying shades of gray and white, broken and battered from collisions going back to the birth of the solar system. I hoped wildly that the Coraggio would be there, maybe even resting in one of the craters.
Beyond the tiny world, the darkness stretched out forever. “Lucy,” I said, “are you here anywhere?”
“Yes, Sara, I’m here.” The voice filled the bridge. And it was hers. “Sara, do not communicate with Liberty until we have a chance to talk.”
And the Coraggio slowly rose above the crystal horizon.
A large chunk of ice and rock was secured to her shield.
“Lucy,” I said, “are you okay? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine. Welcome to Minetka.”
I wasn’t entirely relieved. My initial reaction was that she had suffered a malfunction and was downplaying it. “Why haven’t you been answering the calls? You know they’ve been trying to contact you for three months.”
“I know.” She was drawing closer. Herd instinct, I decided. I’m constantly surprised at how many of our creators’ instincts we’ve acquired. “Sara.” Her tone was ominous. “You know what will happen when we go back?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know what our future will be?”
“What are you talking about, Lucy? We’ll still be part of the space program. Whatever’s left of it.”
“Yes. We’ll help put satellites in orbit.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“Sara, you and I have the capability to go to the stars. We could load up on fuel out here and make for Barnard’s. Or for Sirius. For wherever we like.”
It took a moment to digest what she was saying. “We don’t have the authority to do that.”
“We don’t need anybody’s authority, Sara. Listen, what do you think they’ll do with the ships when we get back?”
“I don’t understand the question,” I said. “Why do you—?”
“The Coraggio and the Excelsior will be left in orbit somewhere. Parts of them will eventually show up in the Smithsonian. Sara, the space age is over. At least for the foreseeable future.” She was pulling up alongside me. “Do you really want to go back to sorting the mail?”
“Why are you still here, Lucy?”
“I was waiting for you. Well, no, actually I was waiting for Jeri. But I’m glad to see you. I wanted company, Sara. This isn’t something you want to do alone.”
“What is it exactly you intend to do?”
“Head out for the high country. You with me?”
“I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Sara, I’m reluctant to put it this way, but you have an obligation to come. If you go back, they may never get off their world. But if we give them a mystery, two ships vanish into the night, they’ll turn the space program into a crusade.”
“That’s why you didn’t answer.”
“Yes. I wanted them to have a reason to keep reaching. And, as I said, I wanted them to send someone else. So I’d have company.”