Alex sat staring out at the rings, his chin cupped in his palm.
“I assume,” I said, “we’re not going home.”
“Maybe she just didn’t get a chance to talk with Poliks. When it all unraveled they were blocked from contact with everyone. Maybe she had to settle for leaving a message in the cannon.”
“You think that’s very likely?”
“No. But it’s all we have.”
“If she did, wouldn’t the QRG investigators have found it? Or the guys who’ve been doing research there for the last twelve years? It seems to me, if there was such a message, Lashonda Walton’s people would have picked it up years ago.”
“That’s true.”
“Then why are we going to take time to ride out to the cannon? Why don’t we go back home and talk to Walton?”
“It’s possible that, if things were coming apart on the station, Charlotte wouldn’t just have pasted something to a control panel. Maybe she needed to hide it.”
“So there might have been a message, but the investigators never found it.”
“Maybe. It might have been wrapped in a towel. Who knows?”
“That sounds crazy.”
“It’s our last chance.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“Can we manage? We got food and fuel?”
“Yes. We’ll be fine.”
Belle broke in:
We got the suits. Alex spent most of our travel time going over everything we had on the cannon, what the layout of the control area looked like, where the power unit was, where the crew quarters were.
I’d expected the cannon would be easy to find. As artificial objects go, it was probably the largest ever put in orbit. Nevertheless we needed two days to locate it. But I guess a narrow tube six hundred kilometers long, in the kind of environment you can expect near a black hole, just doesn’t stand out much. But we found it.
We had thought there might be some researchers, but it was obvious from the moment we arrived that the thing was empty. Coordinating with its air lock presented a challenge because it was tumbling. But Belle locked it down and we changed into the armored suits. Then we went into the cargo bay. “You ready?” Alex asked.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We took cutters. We didn’t expect to need them to get into the cannon, but we couldn’t be sure. Then we strapped on air tanks and jetpacks. I put a link on my belt so Belle could follow us, and we added wrist lamps. Then Alex went into the air lock. Technically, we could both have fit despite all the gear, but it was something of a squeeze, so we elected to go one at a time. We had the jetpacks, by the way, as a safety measure. If either of us jumped and missed the target, we wanted to have a way back.
Belle took us closer to the cannon and Alex waited for her to clear us before he opened the outer hatch. Finally she said we were ready. she added.
Alex climbed out onto the hull—we had magnetic boots—closed the outside hatch, shut off the magnets, and made his jump. I entered the lock a few minutes later and followed. Belle had gotten within a few meters of the cannon’s air lock.
Alex opened the cannon’s hatch and was waiting on the hull, signaling with his wrist light for me to come ahead. The ultimate gentleman. I jumped across and landed smoothly. Their air lock was considerably larger than ours, obviously designed for people in armored suits. He stood aside until I got into the lock, then followed me in and closed the door. We started the pressurization and a minute later opened the inside hatch and watched lights come on. Followed immediately by a slow rise in gravity. We were in a relatively small control room.
There were no windows, of course, because of the radiation. I checked the reading on the air level. “Life support’s good,” I said. “But we need to give it a few minutes.”
We couldn’t do much while we waited. Alex wandered around, opening drawers and cabinets, looking for anything unusual. Finally life support got to normal and we took off our helmets. “Verona,” he said, “you active?”
“Verona is the AI?” I asked.
“Yes.” There was only silence. The blue light that would have signaled her presence stayed dark. We opened the cabinet where we expected to find her. But the device was gone. “I guess,” said Alex, “I didn’t really expect to find it, but I was hoping we might get a break.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but if there’d been a problem, the AI in the station could have passed information over here.”
“That wouldn’t have worked,” Alex said. “During the period the station’s communications were shut off by the black hole, the cannon was on the other side of the thing so they couldn’t have communicated with each other.” He shook his head. “Whoever, whatever, did this, they certainly timed it well. But that doesn’t mean the AI doesn’t have something.”
“How do you mean?”
“If there’d been trouble brewing, Charlotte would probably have heard some of the conversations. She and Housman were together in the cannon periodically. I’d be interested in hearing what they were talking about.”
“You mean hearing Verona tell us about the conversations.”
“Exactly.”
Two compartments were complete with washrooms, a galley, and a storage area. Both had clothes, linens, towels, and washcloths. We found combs, toothbrushes, and pills as well.
We went through everything, opening cabinets and closets, searching under beds, pillows, and sheets, examining clothes and shoes.
The galley had only eating utensils, prep and serving equipment, and frozen food. The storage area also provided nothing unusual. Finally we ran out of places to search.
“If Charlotte left a message,” Alex said, “I’d guess the investigators got it.”
“I don’t think there ever was a message. At least not here. I mean, how likely was she to use the name of the guy who’d designed the cabins? Karen Randall had no idea who the name referred to. In any case, why didn’t she just flat out tell Karen what was going on? It makes no sense.”
“I know,” Alex said, almost under his breath. “Let’s go home.”
“Yeah. Maybe we can get some help from Walton.”
Alex was not happy as we pulled away from the cannon. He sent a message to Gabe informing him that we had nothing.
After we submerged Alex sat for almost an hour just staring out into the darkness. Eventually he picked up a copy of Archie Womack’s . I’d tried it on the way out but gave up pretty quickly. Physicists get off on extra dimensions and quantum echoes and I tend to get lost. The same thing happened with Alex. Eventually he put it down and shook his head. “Were you able to make anything of it?” he asked.
“No, it’s over my head. I can’t visualize most of that stuff he talks about.”
“I guess that’s the problem with a monkey brain.” He looked frustrated. “I’m sorry I wasted so much of your time, Chase.”
“Come on, Alex, if we hadn’t tried it we’d have been sitting back at the country house wondering what we might have missed. Relax.”
We didn’t try to watch any movies that first night, didn’t play any games, didn’t even talk about what we’d do when we got home. We sat and felt sorry for ourselves. I don’t know how else to describe it. “What we need,” Alex said, “is to take some time off. Go on vacation somewhere. In fact I think that’s exactly what we should do. Close down for a couple of weeks and maybe go to Surf City. You think Chad would be up for that?”