“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said. “Those are just details. Nobody notices details”
Maybe he was right. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d stretched things a bit. Two years before, the Institute had not challenged rumors that a breakthrough in antigravity was imminent, even though no such thing was in the works, and in fact every physicist that Kim knew of thought antigravity an impossibility. The story retained credence because people believed that if you could induce artificial gravity, you could surely nullify its effects. But it was a different matter altogether. One didn’t need to bend time and space, but only to establish magnetic fields, to create the condition that allowed people to walk about in starships.
Kim thought that the public relations division might even have started the rumor. When she’d mentioned it to Matt, he had piously denied everything. Piety was always how you knew Matt was lying.
Now she listened to his instructions and wondered why she didn’t just walk out. The money was good, the Institute was a decent cause, and the truth was she got a lot of satisfaction simply from the fact that she was so talented at what she did. But as long as she stayed here, the career she’d wanted, dreamed about, prepared for, would not happen.
She recalled the defensiveness with which she’d told Sheyel what she was doing. “It’s not the field I’d have chosen.”
And he’d been embarrassed for her. “One never knows how things will turn out.”
It was always like that. She was among those who never went to reunions.
Back in her office she found a communication from Shepard. “There’s a response to your message to St. Johns,” he said.
“Onscreen, please, Shep.”
“Yes, Kim. Please note I have adjusted all dates to Greenway Central Time.”
FROM: Chief, Records Branch
TO: Dr. Kimberly Brandywine
DATE: Monday, January 15, 600
SUBJECT: HUNTER Flight Plan
Per your request, following information is provided re: EIV4471886 Hunter flight plan, filed February 11,573.
Depart St. Johns Feb 12, 573 0358.
Arrive QCY4149187 April 17, 573, to begin general survey Golden Pitcher.
Projected departure from Golden Pitcher was to have been reported when known, but was expected at approximately June 1, 574. J. B. Stanley, Records Chief
The entire mission was to have lasted fifteen months. Kim pressed Solly’s key.
“Hi, Kim.” His image brightened the screen. “How’d the meeting go?”
“As usual. Got a question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I should have asked this before: When the Hunter left St. Johns, would they have inspected the jump engines?”
“You mean the station?”
“Yes.”
“Only if asked. The engines should have been looked at by the Foundation’s own people before leaving Sky Harbor. If you’re asking me whether a breakdown is likely early in a voyage that was going way out into the deeps, I’d think not. But it happened. And to be honest, jump engines take a beating. It doesn’t take much of an oversight to cause a problem.”
“What happens if the engines die while they’re in hyperspace?”
“Bye-bye, baby,” he said. “Unless they can make repairs.”
“What about communications?”
“They won’t have any. The ship has to make the jump back into realspace first before they can talk to anybody.”
“That doesn’t show a great deal of foresight.”
He shrugged. “Realities of basic physics, m’dear.”
“Has it ever happened?”
“Don’t know. We’ve lost a ship from time to time.” He watched for a reaction, but she didn’t provide one. “Why? What have you got?”
“Not a thing,” she said.
She put the projected route on her screen, drawing a line between St. Johns and the 187 target star. Somewhere along that line, the engines had shut down and they’d come out of hyperspace, made temporary repairs, and returned to Greenway. So they’d gotten nowhere close to the Golden Pitcher. In fact, since it was approximately a forty-day flight back to Sky Harbor from the closest points along that line, they couldn’t have been much more than a week out of St. Johns when the problem developed.
A week.
That was still a long distance. A starship would cover about 270 light-years in a week.
She marked off the line at that point. Somewhere between the mark and St. Johns, the engines had brought them out of hyper.
“So what?” said Solly, who seemed to be reading her mind. “I mean, we’ve known all along they broke down. What difference does it make where it happened?”
“Let’s go back to square one,” she said.
“What’s square one?”
“‘We struck gold.’ Sheyel’s convinced there was a contact of some kind. Let’s assume he’s right. That the Hunter saw something out there. So the question becomes, where were they when it happened?”
“You tell me: Where were they?”
“Near a star.”
“How do we know that?” asked Solly.
“Has to be. If contact was made either with a ground entity or with an orbiter of some kind, we have ipso facto a star system. If it was made with a vessel, you’d have to ask yourself whether the vessel was in a star system or whether it was out in the void. If it was in the void, what could it have been doing out there?”
“Repairing its engines?” suggested Solly, seeing the point.
“Right. What are the odds against two ships suffering breakdowns and showing up at the same empty place? No, whatever happened, it had to be close to a star.”
She looked at the Hunter’s course. “I count seven stars within a reasonable range along their course line. If they ran into something, it would have been in the neighborhood of one of those seven.”
Solly shook his head. “Okay,” he said. “Suppose you’re right. Suppose there was an encounter of some kind. It was twenty-seven years ago. You think the celestials are still going to be hanging around out there?”
“It doesn’t have to have been another ship” she said. “They may have discovered a living world.”
He sat down on the edge of his desk and considered the possibility. “Yeah,” he said. “That could be.”
“There are only seven stars,” she said again. “Seven.”
“I hope you’re not telling me you’re going to ask for a mission.”
“No.”
“Good,” he said.
“Matt would think I’d gone over the edge.”
“That’s right. And I’m not sure he’d be far wrong. Look, Kim, this is all guesswork, and you don’t have anything more persuasive than a shoe and a crew member who calls home with a cryptic message that may not mean anything at all. That may have been misunderstood for that matter. By the way, did it occur to you that Yoshi might have been talking about the Golden Pitcher?”
“They didn’t get to the Golden Pitcher. They didn’t get anywhere close.”
“Okay.” He shrugged. “I mean, if they found, say, a tree out there, or a city, why not say that? What’s the big secret?”
She had no answer.
He looked at the time. “Got to go. I have some reports due.”
She could see he felt relieved. He’d expected her to go in and make a fool of herself trying to persuade Matt that the Institute should send out a survey team. “Solly,” she said, “when a ship’s logs get sent to the Archives, does anyone actually review them?”