“I suspect,” I said, “that my job with Rainbow requires less offworld time than anything else a pilot would have to deal with. If I were to sign on, say, with Intergalactic Tours, we’d see each other maybe two or three times a year. Probably not even that. When those people get back, they generally stay on the platform.”
The table inquired again whether we were ready to order. Chad ignored it. “You know,” he said, “I got my heart broken a few years ago by someone like you. I’m not much interested in going through that again.”
“I understand, Chad,” I said.
“Will Gabe be with you?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“So you’ll be alone with Alex again?”
“Probably.”
Our meal was dominated by the piano. Usually we had no problem finding things to talk about, but that night was completely subdued. We ate, inquired of each other whether the meal was good, talked about what was happening during Chad’s searches for classical books. We usually ordered a couple of drinks, but not that time. And we both passed on dessert. It felt as if we were hurrying through the evening. Get rid of it.
“I’m sorry it’s happening this way, Chad,” I told him.
“I am too, Chase. I’ve loved being with you.”
I said something similar while we exchanged weak smiles. And finally we were done. He tried to pay. “I can’t let you do that,” I said. “This was my idea.” I knew if I tried to take the entire tab that he wouldn’t allow it, so I asked the table to separate the charges.
Then we were walking outside into the parking lot, leaving the music behind. Our skimmers were close to each other. We reached the point midway between the vehicles. On the rare occasions that both had been present, he’d escorted me to mine. That time we separated. “Good-bye, Chase,” he said. He stood in the moonlight staring at me. “Take care.”
There was no good-bye kiss. No squeezing of hands. He simply closed his eyes, pivoted, and walked away.
XXXVII.
.
I kept replaying everything in my head, wondering what I might have done differently. I expected to have trouble sleeping that night, but I didn’t. Still a sense of regret hung over me. I suspected the day would come when I would wish I could come back to that evening and repair the damage. But I pushed it aside and eventually drifted off into the darkness.
In the morning I downed a quick breakfast, packed everything, loaded it into my skimmer, and set off for the country house. Alex and Gabe were both eating breakfast when I arrived.
They waved me into the dining room and Jacob asked if I wanted something to eat. I settled for my coffee. We had tickets for an early afternoon shuttle. “You coming, Gabe?” I asked.
He laughed. “More time in the ? I don’t think so.”
Alex smiled at his pancakes. “He can deal with six months in the Okorra Desert, but he’s not much for cool air and comfortable compartments.”
“Come on, Alex. I’d love to be with you when you settle in and start listening for the transmission. But other than that it’s going to be a long, dull flight. I’d be willing to try it if we could ride camels or something. But I’m tired of sitting.”
Jacob broke in:
“Chase,” he said, “you mind if I take it in your office?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Alex left the room, and Gabe leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Don’t misunderstand me, Chase, but I think she’s a bit concerned that he keeps going off with you.”
“I ran into the same sort of problem last night.”
“With Chad?”
“Yes.”
“You guys should invite some friends to go along on these trips.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I guess that is the problem with interstellars, isn’t it? What we all like about travel is moving across a landscape, through it or over it. With interstellars, you leave, and you get to your destination, but that’s all there is.”
Alex was gone a half hour. When finally he came back, I couldn’t resist asking him how Veronica felt about his leaving town for a few weeks.
“She’s not happy. She wanted to know why we couldn’t wait two months until school closed so she could go along.”
It would have been nice to have someone else on board. Especially Veronica. She was good company. “I doubt there’s any hurry,” I said. “Nobody else is going to be out there.” I was wondering how Chad would respond to an invitation.
“No. It’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to wait until summer to see this get settled. Anyhow . . .”
“What?”
“Chase, I don’t know how things are with you and Barker, but you don’t invite somebody out for that kind of trip unless you’re willing to make a permanent commitment.”
“That’s not necessarily true, Alex.”
“Take my word for it. You invite Chad along, you’d better be ready to take the next step.” He walked over to the window and looked out at the trees. “There’s another factor: we’re not sure what, if anything, we’re going to find. Best there’s nobody else in on this until we know what happened at the station.”
A call came in from Chad. He appeared in my office, with shelves of books from the Collectors’ Library behind him, and wished me luck.
“Thank you,” I said.
I hesitated about giving him our projected location and when we expected to be there, but finally decided it could do no harm. “You’ll have to use hypercomm to get to us. That’s expensive.”
“Okay. Thank you.” He delivered an uncertain smile and blinked off. It was painful, but the anger of the previous evening was gone.
The date on which Octavia disappeared, give or take a few hours, had been twelve years and nineteen days ago. We would need seventeen days to reach the intercept point. It was easy enough to calculate where the radio transmission, if there had been one, would be at that time. It would have traveled 115 trillion kilometers before we could get in front of it. Actually we expected to arrive approximately three days ahead of the signal. There were some minor uncertainties involved since we didn’t know the exact position of the station or the exact time of transmission.
Every world in the Confederacy had its own calendar, of course. Days were a different length on each world, years were different, and so on. To keep things coherent, a light-year was defined as how far light travels during the course of a standard year, which is to say, a year on Earth.
Our luggage arrived in the Skydeck docking area minutes after we did. We boarded the . Alex carried my bags into my cabin while I sat down on the bridge and said hello to Belle. she said.
“Yes. Hopefully this time we’ll get lucky. What have you been doing since we got in?”