Gabe’s eyes grew intense. “What happened to it?”
“I returned it.”
“To whom?”
“Its owner. I think she had a receipt.”
“You ?”
“Gabe, it’s been a long time. But yes, I wouldn’t have given it to anyone who couldn’t prove she was the owner.”
“Did you run it by Alex?”
“I think at the time he was out on a project.”
Alex broke in: “Gabe, who did it belong to?”
“Angela Harding.”
“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’ll check it.”
“Please do. We need a contact.”
I left the room and walked down the hallway to my office. The door opened for me and I went inside. “Jacob, check out Angela Harding for me, please.”
I sat down and started some soft music.
“Did she pick up a silver trophy several years ago?”
“Was she the owner?”
“What was the source of the trophy?”
“Do we have a receipt?”
“Print a copy, please.”
Amanda was still overseeing a conversation between Gabe and the audience when I got back. “We have it,” I said, and handed him the receipt.
“Good.” He looked over at Alex, who nodded, suggesting he’d told his uncle I wouldn’t give anything away without getting the appropriate paperwork. “Alex, you know who Angela Harding is, don’t you?”
“I have no idea, Gabe.”
“She is Rick Harding’s sister.”
Alex’s brow creased. “The name rings a bell.”
“He was one of the people lost on Octavia.”
“Oh. Right.”
Amanda had finished her remarks and was part of a small crowd that had gathered around us. “I knew Archie,” she said.
“Archie Womack?” The question came from several people.
“Yes.”
Everyone turned and looked at her. They said they were sorry to hear it and asked whether they’d been close. Alex was visibly surprised. “I don’t recall your mentioning it at the time.”
“He was a good man,” she added. “He had a special interest in orphans. I don’t know how many of them got through Andiquar University thanks to his support.”
“You came to know him through the museum?” somebody asked.
“Actually, no. We belonged to the same bridge club. Over the years we got closer. He was at the house a few times. We had lunch together occasionally. I’m pretty sure you met him once.” That was directed at Alex.
“Really?” He was trying to reach back, but he produced nothing. “I remember getting introduced to a lot of your friends over the years.” He shrugged. “I just don’t remember.”
Her eyes closed and she shook her head. “I’m sorry he’s gone. I wish they could pin down what happened.”
“So do I,” said Gabe.
“The best they could come up with,” said Amanda, “is that they got attacked by pirates. Or kidnapped by aliens.”
“You don’t buy into either, I assume?”
“We don’t have any pirates. And in either case, if someone they didn’t know showed up, they’d certainly have sent a message. No, wait, I take that back. There was a period of about thirty hours every few months that they were blocked off. That the black hole got between them and anybody they could have contacted. And that was when it happened.”
“Interesting,” said Alex. “Any reason someone would have wanted to attack them?”
“None I’ve ever heard of.”
“That would be worth looking into, Alex,” said Fenn Redfield. “I take it you’ve never gotten involved.”
“No, not really. No way I could.”
Fenn asked Gabe what he knew about it.
“Not much. If my memory serves me right, the Octavia tech, Rick Harding, was the owner of the trophy. Angela said she found it in a closet after the station disappeared. She brought it in here and asked me if I’d ever seen anything like it before.”
“Had you?”
“Not at first glance. Unfortunately I never had time to work on it. I can tell you there’s no record anywhere, in any known age, of a set of characters that looked like the ones on the artifact.”
“So it might have been legitimate? A product of an alien civilization?”
“Possibly.”
Alex looked puzzled. “If it was, why did he have it in a closet?”
“I think you just asked the right question.” Gabe looked seriously unhappy. “Unfortunately I don’t even have a picture of it.”
We drifted back into the party. But Gabe and Alex spent much of the rest of the evening in what was obviously a serious conversation. The truth was there was no way those two were going to walk away from a lost artifact. But Gabe had committed to join an archeological team that was preparing to leave for the Korkona, a star system that had housed a failed colony during the sixth millennium. And Alex was facing a trip around the world in two days to attend an antiquities conference. So I got the assignment of taking the first step. “Chase,” said Gabe, “do we have a contact for her?”
“For Angela Harding?”
“Yes.”
“She lives in Newbury. Or at least she did when she retrieved the artifact.” I passed the question to Jacob.
he said. Four years earlier. Newbury was about sixty kilometers west, a quiet little leisurely town.
“Okay.” Gabe shook his head. Nothing’s ever easy. “Chase, see if you can track her down. That okay with you, Alex? I don’t want to be taking over your assistant.”
Alex grinned. “I don’t exactly think of Chase as an assistant. But sure. Do whatever you need.”
“Right. Okay. If you can locate her, we’d like to recover the trophy, if possible. And if you can, let’s get more information on Harding. It would be especially helpful if we could find out where he got the thing.”
“Gabe,” said Alex, “you probably remember this better than we all do, but when nobody could explain how a space station could disappear, even one circling a black hole, rumors started showing up. Harding was the tech. The station had thrusters. Could he or someone else have used them to send the station into the black hole?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Gabe. He passed the question to me.
“I doubt he could have used the system to steer the thing into the hole. It was a station, not a ship. He’d have had to destabilize it, get it out of orbit. It would have taken a while, and it’s hard to believe the others would have just stood around and watched.”
“There were also rumors,” said Amanda, “that DPSAR figured out what happened but kept it quiet.”
“Somebody wrote a book,” I said. “The title was . It claimed that a bomb had been planted on the station.”
“How could that have happened?” asked Gabe. “They were out there for what, a year and a half? And they weren’t changing the personnel.”
“There were periodic visits by supply vehicles. Mostly bringing food and water. The problem is they couldn’t find a motive for anyone, so the author invented one. Blamed it on religious extremists who thought we were breaking into divine territory. But she could never point the finger at anyone specific.”