We went back down to the Orion Express Center. There were a few customers this time. Bentley was gone, replaced by a woman. That was good. He’d pretty obviously decided we were troublemakers. “Hello,” Gabe said. “We’re interested in the New Worlds Tour. Are you still running it?”
The woman was taller than either of us. She wasn’t young, and she delivered a tired frown. Her eyes turned to the screen on her right side. She tapped a key and, without looking away from it, asked what the New Worlds Tour was. “I never heard of it,” she added.
“They used to go out past the frontier. By way of Elysium. They took people to worlds hardly anyone had been to before.”
She bit her lower lip. “Hold on a second. Let me take a look.” She touched more keys. Behind us, two customers started looking restless.
“Yeah,” she said, pressing the screen with her index finger. “We used to have one of those. But not anymore. It’s been gone a long time.”
“Why did they discontinue it?”
“They decided it was dangerous. There was a series of destinations, but some of the places had hazards. Sudden storms out of nowhere, wild animals. A couple places had biological issues. Bugs that might have been infectious.”
“That’s rare,” said Gabe. “Usually we’re immune to diseases from other worlds.”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
I jumped in: “One of the worlds they used to visit had nine or ten moons. Can you check to see where it is? Which system it’s in?”
Somebody behind me groaned.
“I don’t have access to anything like that,” she said. “I’m seeing that the farthest flight was to Zenora 46, about two hundred light-years out. But that’s all I have.” She looked over my shoulder and held up a hand, reassuring the people behind us we were almost finished.
“You have any staff people,” Gabe asked, “who might be able to help?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m the only person on duty.”
We went back to the hotel and Gabe discovered there was a Chippewa Travel Adviser. He called and she blinked on moments later in the center of the room, wearing a blue uniform with a white shoulder patch carrying the outline of an interstellar yacht. Golden hair fell down onto her shoulders. She could have been Chad’s sister. But she wore a smile that suggested she had a no-nonsense personality. she said,
“We understand,” said Gabe, “there’s a terrestrial planet with approximately nine moons that’s within a hundred light-years of Elysium. It’s a living world, not a gas giant. Can you identify it for me?”
“Sure. Take your time.”
She was back in twenty seconds.
“Can you tell me where it is? Coladia?”
“Yes, please. To the . It’s docked at the space station.”
“Thank you.”
Gabe agreed to give them thirty markers, which, I thought, was unduly generous. But I left it to him. The adviser thanked us and was gone.
“Coladia,” said Gabe. “That’s not a good sign.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s the name. Sounds like a place where a lot of stuff collides.”
“Maybe we should have asked Blondie.”
XIX.
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,
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,
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We thought about checking out of the hotel and getting an early start. But we’d paid for the rooms so we decided to use them. We spent the evening wandering the concourse, visiting gift and book shops, looking down at Chippewa where its lights glittered through the night, and downing a couple of drinks at a café called The Last Stop while a guitarist played and sang. Apparently there’d been a wedding earlier, and what was left of the party was hanging on. The happy couple, we were told, were ironically on their way to Elysium and the Oceanside Hotel.
Nonetheless, Gabe was happy to become part of the celebration. In the midst of it, he joined a young woman and the guitarist to sing a couple of numbers, including “Echoes of You.” I’d forgotten how good his voice was. Near the end of the evening, he commented that the place needed a piano. “Maybe,” I said, “we should get one on board the .”
“Good idea.” He said it with a smile. “Let’s mention it to Alex.”
It wasn’t entirely a joke. The flight to the system that was home to Coladia would be short, but when you added the time to track down the world, it would extend to several days. A piano would help. “You still writing?” I asked as we belted in and got ready to launch. The exit gate in the overhead was opening.
“Music?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t write music.”
“You were writing some songs when my mom was your pilot.”
“That was strictly an experiment, Chase. I don’t have any talent. Ask your mother.”
“That wasn’t what she told me.”
Before he could reply, comm ops was on the circuit: Belle-Marie,
I opened the channel. “We’re here.”
I didn’t think there was much chance of getting a repeat of the transmission that Rick Harding had heard.
“Why not?” Gabe asked.
“There’s been a history of artificial transmissions going all the way back to the beginning of the space age. Somebody hears something but they never hear a follow-up.”
Gabe nodded. “I guess. But we knew before we came out here that it would be a long shot. What else have we got?”
“So we go to this place, listen, and when we don’t hear anything, we launch your portable radio telescope and go back home. Is that the plan?”
“Yes.”
Transit time to the RK617 system was less than an hour. We surfaced about 400 million kilometers from a dim sun and immediately asked Belle to check for radio signals that might be artificial.
She needed a minute. Then:
Coladia would have taken some time to locate. But there was no point in going there. “Keep listening,” I told Belle. “Let us know if you hear anything.”