“Why didn’t you just tell Bill to do that?” he asked.
“Bill’s in sleep mode,” she said.
He hadn’t even known there was a sleep mode.
The sofa wasn’t lush, but neither were the beds in their compartments. The sofa had the advantage of providing more space. He was thinking how the Salvator was not built for romance, but she certainly was. There was a last fleeting notion that he should not let this go any further. Then his good sense kicked in.
I don’t know whether I have ever felt quite the same degree of exhilaration as on that night, racing across the stars, knowing the whole time the asteroid was bearing down on that group of unfortunates stranded at the Galactic. It was one of those occasions when one ceases to be simply a reporter, and becomes instead a participant.
— The Notebooks of Gregory MacAllister
chapter 31
The sheer size of the Capella asteroid, and the thought of the kind of technology it must have taken to redirect it and aim it at the Galactic, to arrange that it arrive at the precise time and place to intercept the hotel, carries one overwhelming message: The best way for the human race to handle the moonriders would be to hide under the table.
— Gregory MacAllister, Journals
He came out of a deep sleep to find her coming back off the bridge, wrapped in a sheet. “Anything wrong?” he asked.
“Just waking Bill.” She stopped for a moment, pretending innocence, to let him get a better look.
“‘Naked Singularity,’” said MacAllister.
“Mac, you’re shameless.”
“Or maybe ‘Unclad at Capella.’”
“Are you trying out titles?”
“How’d you guess?”
“For a National story? Or your autobiography?” She pulled the sheet tighter, revealing more. “How about ‘Orgy at Ophiuchi’?”
More than ever, he felt the restrictions imposed by the bulkheads. He would have liked to take her out somewhere, to a park, or a restaurant, or simply for a walk downtown. He wanted to show her off.
“Last night was very nice, Mac,” she said. “I think you do not believe all the things you say.”
“What do I say?”
“That there’s a legitimate point of view for celibacy.”
“I never said that.”
“You imply it.”
“That’s because families are such a hassle.”
“Do you have any? Children?”
“No.”
“Then what do you know about it?”
“Bizet never went to a bullfight.”
“That sounds like a myth. How could anybody possibly know whether he did or not?”
“All you have to do is listen to people who’ve been through the experience. Do you have any kids?”
“No.”
“Okay. Most people who’ve been parents will tell you that when they first started thinking about marriage they would have been smart to head for a mountaintop and go into philosophy.”
“Mac,” she said, “you deliver these generalizations, and they are both funny and wicked. But we both know life is much more complicated. The country is fortunate to have you. Although I would ask where you’d be if your father had behaved as you suggest?”
MacAllister showered and dressed. Then she showed him pictures of the hotel. Some walls and panels were in place, and even a few viewports, but the Galactic was still, for the most part, no more than a large gridwork. When completed, it would have resembled the Crystal Palace.
Watching the images seemed to have a depressing effect on Valya. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Something’s wrong.”
She didn’t reply.
“The hotel?”
“No,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“They can build a new hotel, Valya. And everybody’s getting out.”
“Damn it, Mac, I don’t care about the hotel.”
Oh. “We’re talking about last night.”
She shrugged.
“There’s no commitment,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then what?”
He could see her debating whether to answer. “Call it sleeping with the enemy.”
“I’m not an enemy,” he said.
She nodded. “I know, Mac. I know.”
CAPELLA FEATURES FOUR suns. Two were immediately visible when they arrived in-system. They were yellow-white class-Gs, one slightly brighter than the other. “These two,” said Bill, “are both much larger than Sol. Each has a diameter of about fourteen million kilometers.”
MacAllister tried to recall the size of the sun.
“Ten times greater,” said Bill, apparently reading his mind. “And much brighter. Capella A is eighty times as luminous. B is about fifty times brighter.”
“That sounds as if they burn a lot of fuel,” he said.
“That is correct. Each of these two has completed its hydrogen-burning phase.” He paused. “They’re dying giants, Mac.”
“Bill,” Valya said, “open a channel to the shuttle.” The AI complied, and she sent a message to Karim, informing him of their position and arrival time. Half hour or so after the asteroid was going to arrive.
Ten minutes later they had a response. “We’re fine,” Karim said. “We’re well clear of the asteroid.”
“Okay, sit tight. We’ll be by to pick you up.” She switched back to the AI. “Bill, give me some vectors and fuel consumption.”
AS THEY ACCELERATED toward the shuttle, MacAllister asked about the other two suns.
Two dim red stars showed up on the navigation screen. “They’re both class Ms, Mac. Red stars. Quite dim, as you can see. They’re a double star themselves, but they’re almost a light-year away.”
The yellow suns seemed quite close to each other.
“They are,” said Bill. “They’re only one hundred million kilometers apart. Roughly the distance from Venus to the sun.”
“It’s one of the reasons they wanted to build the hotel here,” Valya said. “It’s a spectacular sky.”
Bill replaced the red stars with a close-up image of a blue world. “You don’t usually get planets orbiting a close binary,” he said. “Usually, they’re ejected. If they survive, they will normally orbit one star or the other. When the stars are as close together as these are, that’s not going to happen, and you just don’t find planets. Capella is the exception. Here we have not one world, but two, orbiting the gravitational center between the two suns. The hotel is located at Alpha Capella II.”
“As I understand it,” said MacAllister, “Alpha II is not a living world. Right?”
“That’s right. But it’s supposed to have great skiing. And in fact they claim there’s a lot to see. Towering mountain ranges, long island chains, rugged coasts.”
“Does it have a breathable atmosphere?”
“Unfortunately not. I think I read somewhere it’s loaded with methane.”
“I don’t know,” said MacAllister. “I’d expect people planning to vacation on another world would want dinosaurs. And I know they’d prefer oxygen.”
She laughed. “Oxygen, maybe. But lizards? I’ve seen some big ones up close. You can have them.”
Bill was putting groundside images on screen. Canyons. Mountain peaks. River valleys. Waterfalls.
MacAllister frowned. “I wasn’t talking about me. But most people like animals.”
She was watching the display. Never took her eyes from it. “It’s a lovely world, Mac. Slightly larger than Earth. And there’s a magnificent river system that puts the Mississippi to shame. It’s perfect for rafting.”
“That sounds like Eric. You might consider a career in public relations.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve got what I want. I’m going to stay out here until they come to get me.”
KARIM CALLED. “WE left an imager at the hotel to watch the thing come in. Would you like us to relay the visuals to you?”
“Please,” said Valya.
The asteroid looked more like a planet than a rock. Otherwise, it was run-of-the-milclass="underline" misshapen, scarred, cratered, ridges here, smooth once-molten rock there. It was just visible over the rim of the world. It might have been coming off the ocean. “How big is it again?” asked MacAllister.
“The diameter’s roughly six hundred kilometers at its widest point.” She showed him. She put up an image of the Surveyor museum. The asteroid and the Surveyor appeared about the same size. She moved the museum closer to the asteroid. His perspective changed and he watched it dwindle. Shrink to the size of an insect. And ultimately vanish. “It won’t collide with the hotel,” she said. “It’ll be more like a swat.”
“And it won’t hit the planet?”
“No. It’ll skim past, right at the top of the atmosphere. It’ll obliterate the hotel and go back out.”
“Perfect shot,” said MacAllister. “I wonder if these guys play pool.”
The asteroid was turning slowly. You had to stay with it a few minutes to see the movement. As he watched, a chain of craters came over the horizon.
Below, on the planetary surface, storms drifted through the atmosphere. And towers of cumulus. There was snow at the caps and on some of the mountaintops. But there was no green. Alpha II had a sandstone appearance. It was a beautiful woman with no soft lines.
Valya switched to a view of the Galactic. “That’s taken from the shuttle,” Valya said.
The hotel glittered in the light from the two suns, a sprawling, mostly open framework. “How long have they been working out here?” he asked.
“I think about nine months.”
“Doesn’t look as if they got very far.”
“Don’t know,” she said. “I’m not up on construction projects.”
From the perspective of the imager at the hotel, the asteroid was rising, climbing higher above the curve of the world. Getting bigger. Overwhelming the sky.
Bill appeared in his captain’s uniform. “One minute to impact,” he said. “It’s closing at thirteen kilometers per second.”
It blocked off the sun.