“We’d like to get more information about you, if we can. We’re interested in doing a book detailing the life of a star pilot. You’d be a good central figure.”
Gabe was impressed by the modesty: “Being an interstellar technician as well as a pilot is fairly exceptional, Rick. That’s exactly why. Not to mention the girl troopers. If we tell your story, we’d be relating pretty much what interstellar pilots live with. What it’s like to be away from friends and family for extended periods. What it’s like to cruise past a giant star. You know what I mean.”
“Can you give us some names? People we can talk to who’ve been a significant part of your life?”
He gave us nine names, including Esther’s. When he was done, we assured him that if we were able to finish the project, we’d see that they all got copies of the book. Then I looked over at Gabe. He was done.
“Thank you, Rick,” I said.
He actually managed to look as if he was interested in our getting together for an evening.
When he was gone, Gabe looked pleased.
“What?” I asked.
He sat back in his chair and gazed at me with that smug look I was once so familiar with. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Why not?”
“Hotels want to be noticed.”
“You’re saying—?”
“The Oceanside wasn’t going to go to all that trouble with an artificial language that accomplished nothing except preventing potential customers from reading it.”
“Maybe they thought the winners would show their prizes around a lot.”
“That’s what they would like. Except you would want to find a way to get the hotel’s name out front. Putting everything in an artificial language is more likely to scare potential visitors off.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “I have a suggestion. When we get a chance, let’s call Skydeck and find out if the is in dock, and check to see who owns it.”
“And then,” said Gabe, “we ride up and talk to the ship’s AI.”
We’d have an advantage that we didn’t have with the avatar: AIs can’t be rigged to lie.
The speaker released its musical alert as we descended toward the country house. It wasn’t Angela Montgomery, though. “Good morning,” I said. “Rainbow Enterprises.”
The caller was Clem Wayfield, one of our clients. he said,
“Clem,” I said, “I’m not in the building. But I’ll be there shortly. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get back to you.”
Bester was a minor politician who’d run for a governorship in the last century.
“I don’t, Clem. I’ll check and get right back to you. That kind of information is not accessible when we’re out of the building.”
We touched down as Wayfield gave me an exasperated okay. Jacob opened the front door and said he was glad to see us.
“No,” said Gabe. The place was empty. Alex had gone off to his antiquities conference on the other side of the world.
I checked on Bester’s lamp. It had not moved yet. I called Wayfield and he expressed his dismay at what he perceived as our lack of interest. he said,
“I’ll take a look, Clem. I’ll get back to you later.”
I called Skydeck Ops. “Is there a currently in operation?”
they said.
“But you have one?”
“What happened to it?”
Mary Kaye
“Can you give me the name of the current owner?”
“Can you tell me if it’s docked now?”
“When do you expect it back?”
“Can you let me know when it returns?”
Gabe came into my office a few minutes later. “How’d we make out?” he asked.
“They weren’t much help.”
“Did you ask them to let us know when the thing’s in port?”
“Privacy concern.”
“Where’ve I heard that before?”
“Gabe, why do we care about this so much? About the trophy?”
“Are you serious?” He sat down in one of the armchairs. “If that thing is , it means that Harding, or somebody, may have discovered a civilization that we don’t know about. Maybe it’s gone, maybe it’s still out there, but we just don’t know. If it exists, if they’re still alive, it would be the biggest news of the millennium. A third interstellar society.” He leaned forward. “And I don’t want to go crazy on this, but there could be a connection with Octavia.”
“Blame it on the aliens,” I said.
“I’m serious. We just don’t know.”
Gabe took me to dinner that evening at Molly’s Top of the World, located on the peak of Mount Oskar. I asked him about his upcoming mission.
“We’re going to Bowman’s World.” It was one of the planets orbiting Solanik, Rimway’s closest neighbor. “Earth is supposed to have dispatched a few ships during the fifth millennium to go out and set up a colony. There’s no record that it actually happened, but there are references to the effort in some of the literature from the period.”
“Has anybody gone out to look?”
“Of course. There’ve been several missions.”
“And—?”
“They haven’t found anything. At the time the colonials left Earth, if they really did, it was in the middle of the millennium. A turbulent period. The whole story may just be a myth, or they might have lied about their destination and gone somewhere else. Or maybe the people doing the missions weren’t thorough enough.”
“So you and your colleagues are going to try again?”
“Yes.”
“How many of you are going?”
“Just two of us. Ed Baxter will be with me.”
“That seems small for that kind of mission. How much digging can two guys do?”
He laughed. “Not much. We won’t be doing any digging. We’re just going to do a quick survey and try to decide the most likely place they’d have tried to settle. Then, if we turn anything up, we’ll send in a team.”
“Who’s providing the transportation?” I was wondering whether he hadn’t asked me to go because he didn’t want to offend Alex. Or put me on the spot.
“The WWAA,” he said. That was the Wide World Archeological Association. “They’d like to settle the matter.”
“Sounds as if it could be an interesting trip.”