Eric’s problem was that he had seen too many action vids. He visualized himself as the free-swinging sim hero, Jack What’s-His-Name. And, of course, there was no point reminding him that, whatever the odds Jack faced, he always had the writers on his side.
Valya put them on course toward the monitor and began to accelerate. MacAllister sank back into his chair. “Do we see anything moving anywhere?” he asked.
“Nothing that’s not in a standard orbit, Mac. If we spot anything, I’ll let you know.”
Amy looked at him and grinned. “Glad you came, Mr. MacAllister?”
“Oh,” he said, “you bet, Amy. Wouldn’t have missed it.” He tried to deliver the line straight, but she picked something up and looked at him oddly.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “We can run pretty fast if we have to.”
“No, no,” he said, as if personal safety were of no concern. “It’s not that.” He tried to think what it might be. “I was just anxious to get a look at the asteroid.”
NONE OF THE monitor’s status lamps worked. “General power failure, looks like,” said Valya.
“Could that happen naturally?” asked Eric, as they pulled alongside.
“Oh, sure.” Valya suited up and headed aft. Eric asked whether she wanted company.
“No,” she said. “Thanks anyhow. Nothing you can do.”
She disappeared below. Hatches opened and closed. They heard the whooshing sounds of decompression. The ship moved slightly and aligned itself more closely to the monitor, which floated just outside the cargo doors.
MacAllister remembered a favored theme in popular sims and cheap novels, in which a monster is brought aboard a ship inadvertently. Usually, a settlement had been wiped out, cause unknown. The rescue ship gathers evidence and starts home. And the thing creeps out of a canteen and, within twenty-four hours or so, is terrorizing the ship. While he thought about that, the cargo doors opened. Bill switched to zero gee, moved the Salvator slightly to starboard, and the instrument floated inside. Valya disconnected the monitor’s telescopes and sensors. He watched her work over the unit, poking and prodding and running tests.
“Nothing jumps out at me,” she said at last. “It has no power. But we pretty much knew that.” She began opening panels in the device.
“Can you tell why not?” asked Amy.
“Hang on a sec.”
“You think the moonriders did it?” Eric asked.
The future pilot shook her head. “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t the monitor have seen them coming?”
“Yes,” said MacAllister. “We would have had pictures.”
“It’s the calibrator.” She’d plugged a gauge into one of the slots. “It failed, we got a surge, and everything blew out.”
“Could the moonriders have done it?” persisted Eric.
“No. I’d say it’s just a routine breakdown.” Then she was talking to the monitor: “Let’s see now…. Should be one here somewhere…. There we go.” And to her passengers: “I’m going to install a replacement. It’ll only take a few minutes. Then we’ll relaunch and be on our way.”
Eric looked disappointed.
WHEN VALYA WAS finished, she ran more tests, reattached the monitor’s parts, put it back outside, and came back up to the common room. “All right,” she said, “let’s go take a look at the asteroid.”
Yes, thought MacAllister, there was the mystery. Why were the moonriders interested in a piece of iron? He tried to keep his imagination on a leash. But he found himself considering the possibility that it might contain an inner chamber, perhaps with a ghastly secret. Or maybe Amy was right, and the thing was a fuel depot. Or maybe it was a rest stop of some sort. On the other hand, if any of those explanations was valid, why adjust its orbit? “How long to catch it?” he asked Valya.
She finished climbing out of the e-suit harness and headed for the bridge. “A few hours.”
“And it’s still not going anywhere particular?”
“Not as far as I can see. It’s more or less inbound, toward the sun.”
MacAllister sat back and shook his head. How about that? I was right all the time. There are aliens, and they’re as incomprehensible as the folks in DC.
HE HADN’T APPRECIATED the size of the asteroid until the Salvator drew alongside. His perspective changed, and the long, battered wall outside the ship shifted and went underneath and became a rockscape. They were only a few meters above the surface, close enough that MacAllister could have reached down and touched the thing. Then the rockscape gave way, and they were looking into a gorge. “There’s the depression,” Valya said. Where the moonrider had gone.
She turned on the navigation lights and aimed them into the gorge. It was a long way down, maybe several hundred meters. “We’re not actually going down there, are we?” asked Eric.
“No need to,” she said. “We can see fine from here.”
MacAllister’s imagination was galloping. He half expected to find an airlock. Or, as Amy had suggested, fuel lines. But there was nothing unusual. Below them, the sides of the gorge drew gradually together. The moonrider must simply have wedged itself in, applied power, and proceeded to change the asteroid’s course. It just didn’t look possible. The asteroid was immense.
He looked across to the horizon. The asteroid was so small that all directions seemed sharply downhill.
Valya was still looking into the gorge. “How about that?”
“What do you see?” asked Eric.
“Not a thing.”
MacAllister nodded. “The dog in the night.”
Amy grinned. “It didn’t bark,” she said.
“Very good. I didn’t think kids today read Sherlock Holmes.”
“I saw the sim.”
“What are we talking about?” asked Eric.
“There aren’t any marks,” said Amy. “There should be marks if something wedged itself in here and shifted the asteroid onto a new course.”
“Ah,” said Eric. “You’re right. It does look pretty smooth out there.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Amy.
Valya pushed back her red hair with her fingertips. “Damned if I know. I don’t think there’s anything else to be done here. Unless we want to wait around a bit and see whether they come back.”
“Hide-and-seek,” said MacAllister. “We pull out, they show up. Maybe Amy’s right. Maybe they’re delinquents.”
Amy cleared her throat. Looked mock-offended. “I didn’t say that, Mac,” she said.
Valya sat with her head back, eyes closed. “Bill,” she said. “Where’s the asteroid headed?”
“Sunward, Valya.”
“We know that. Go beyond that. Several orbits if you have to.”
“Working.”
“It’s starting to look,” said Eric, “as if we’ll be going back with more questions than answers.”
“It will in time intersect with Terranova.”
Everyone stopped breathing. “When?”
“In seventeen years, five months. On its third orbit.”
“By ‘intersect,’” said MacAllister, “you mean collide?”
“That is correct, Gregory.”
Eric paled. “My God,” he said, “a rock this size — ”
Amy nodded. “Would cause mass extinctions.”
“Makes no sense,” said MacAllister. “There’s nothing down there except the wildlife. Why would anybody want to wipe them out?”
“Maybe they want to terraform the place,” said Amy.
Valya sat up straight. “Whatever they’re about, it looks as if we can assume they’re not friendly. Bill?”
“Yes, Valya?” “I want to talk to Union.”