“About what?”
It went with a rush. The bogus transmission from the Ophiuchi monitor. How the Terranova asteroid had been aimed months ago by a pair of Orion cargo haulers. How the other asteroid, the one at Capella, was also a fabrication. Orion had known about it well in advance, she said, and they’d put the hotel precisely at the impact point. “I didn’t realize they’d play it so close,” she said. “They had the timing for the rescue down, but it was a near thing. If I’d known…”
He listened, at first merely frowning, but gradually she watched his features darken. Had it been Mac, who often looked irritated, it would not have meant so much. Mac was accustomed to dealing with liars. But Eric, easygoing, amiable Eric, was different. He was not simply angry; he was hurt.
He struggled to respond. And she wondered what there was for him to say after she’d played them all for idiots. It’s okay, Valya. No hard feelings. I understand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Then just sat there.
He looked past her. At the bulkhead. At the open hatch to the bridge. At the spot where the Athenian dancing girl and her Spartan captain had stood against the Persians. “Thanks for telling me,” he said.
He seemed frozen to his seat.
“If you want, Eric, I’ll let you off at the station. Hutch knows. She’s sending another ship as soon as she can find one. To relieve us. If you don’t mind waiting around, you’d be able to go home with them.”
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He stared down at her. “I’m not the one you’re going to have to answer to.”
The air in the room felt warm and close. “I’ve written my resignation. I’ll be lucky if Hutch doesn’t press charges.”
He got up and started for the passageway. “I wasn’t talking about Hutch,” he said.
VALYA HAD NEVER seen a moonrider. She’d seen pictures, supposedly taken live, but she knew how easily those could be generated. She simply didn’t believe the moonriders existed. Call it denial. Call it provincialism. To her, it was a question of accepting her instincts. She no more expected to see aliens in superluminals than the eighteenth-century explorers expected to find Pacific island natives in capital ships.
The current mission — presumably her last — was an exercise in futility, but it had been assigned, so she’d do what was required, as she always had. Almost always. In any case, she was in no hurry to go back.
They rode through the void in strained silence. Eric had remained only a few minutes in his cabin before apparently thinking better of his reaction. He returned to the common room and tried to behave as if he hadn’t walked off on her. But there was no getting around the abysmal cloud that occupied the middle of the room. “I take it,” he said finally, “there’s no threat. Was Amy bought, too?”
That scored a direct hit. “I never took a cent,” she said. “I did it because I thought it was something that needed to be done.”
His features were rigid. “Tell me about Amy.”
“I don’t know anything about Amy. I wasn’t there. For all I know, it really happened.”
“Can I believe you now?”
“I don’t lie,” she said.
“Of course not.” He picked up his reader and began paging through it, trying to behave as though she wasn’t there.
“Eric,” she said, “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry you got involved. There was nothing personal in it.”
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter much one way or the other.”
When he pretended to bury himself in his reading, she went up onto the bridge.
WHEN THE SALVATOR got within range of Origins, she reactivated the sweep. “Look for asteroids,” she told Bill.
“There will be no asteroids here, Valya,” he said. “It is no small matter to find even a dust particle. This area was chosen for the Origins Project for that very reason.”
“Do the sweep anyhow, Bill,” she said. “Let me know if you see anything.”
She felt like a damned fool. Eric never looked up. She walked past him and went below to conduct an inventory of the breathers Hutch had sent along. She counted eight, some with a two-hour air supply, most with four.
What had Hutch expected her to do with eight units? There were almost two hundred people at Origins.
She stayed below more than an hour. When she was finished with the inventory, she opened the hatch to the lander and slipped into the pilot’s seat. The cargo bay was dark and quiet. She sat staring at the launch doors. Finally, the tears came, and the emotions she’d been holding back overwhelmed her. My God, she thought, what have I done?
The launch doors beckoned. She could instruct Bill to take Eric to Origins. She pictured herself adrift in the lander, air running out, waiting for the end. Hutch would shake her head and comment how she’d had it coming.
She tried to steel herself to do it. Get it over with. It was a way to show that, despite everything they thought about her, she was an honorable woman.
Mac also probably knew the truth by now. There was a guy who would know how to forgive. She could imagine him looking at her with those belligerent eyes and shaking his head. And walking away from her.
Never darken my door.
She was close to doing it. At least she thought she was. She actually closed the hatch and sat trying to find the words to tell Bill to depressurize the launch section.
But she’d promised she’d check for asteroids.
What a laugh.
Was there a chance, any chance at all, that monsters would come out of nowhere on a vector for one of the towers?
Still, she’d said she would do a sweep.
She desperately wanted a reason to prolong her life. And it was all she had.
When you depressurize, you can hear it at first. Hear the air getting sucked out. After a couple of minutes the sound goes away because there’s not enough air to carry it. She wiped her eyes and wished there were a way to make everything right.
People like to say they’re not afraid of dying. Valya was. The time in daylight is so short, so marvelous. She hated the thought of plunging into the night. Of taking that final deep dive into annihilation.
It would have been easier if she were leaving behind an admirable record. If she could believe Mac would stand at night and look at the stars and remember that she had been part of his life. If Hutch would regret the loss, even a little, and the Academy, or maybe a small group of friends, would hold a service for her, where someone would cry.
SHE WAS STILL hours away when she braked, connected with the facility’s approach beam, and made final course adjustments. From this point she would not use her engines.
The preliminary sweeps, as she knew they would, revealed only empty space in all directions. Eventually the Salvator drew within visual range of the East Tower. Abiding by procedure, she sent an audio-only report to Mission Ops: “We read negative 6.5 million kilometers out. Assuming maximum approach velocity of twenty-five kps, predict no threat can materialize within next three days.”
The chance of finding a rock coming in faster than that was pretty much nil.
She could imagine Hutchins sitting in her office, amused at Valya’s being forced to turn her last mission into a wild goose chase.
AHEAD, THE EAST Tower floated in the dark. It was visible only as a circle of starless space. A transmission was coming in. “Welcome to the Origins Project, East Tower.”
“Hello, East Tower. Salvator requests clearance to dock.”
“Very good, Salvator. We’ll bring you in.”
“Buckle in, Eric,” she said.
He had made an effort to lighten the mood. Told her he wished her luck and changed the subject. But the atmosphere remained tense, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.