We were left with about thirty target stars, including the ten visited by the Wescotts.
The track of the Falcon was bright and clear.
“Store the pattern,” she said.
It winked off.
“Okay, Mark. Now I want you to plan a flight to the same ten stars, using minimal total travel time. Start from the same star the Falcon mission used. Taio Whatever.
When you have it, put it up.”
Taio 4776 grew bright, and the line came out of it again, moved to Icehouse, then to the star near the lamp. When it had finished all ten, the zigzag pattern floated in front of us. “Looks like the same one,” I said.
“Let’s find out. Mark, shrink the pattern and let’s see the first one again. Overlay them.”
He moved the patterns until they were side by side. Then he merged them.
Identical.
“Try the previous mission,” I said.
We found it in the 1386-87 flight.
The patterns were almost identical. Again, the mission had visited ten planetary systems. But this time, it had not used the most-fuel-efficient route. The deviation came at the sixth star.
Tinicum 2502.
It wasn’t a major change, but it was enough to tell us something was wrong.
We sat looking at it. Had they remained consistent to the pattern, they would not have gone to Tinicum.
“Okay,” I said. “Which star should they have visited? Which one fits with the rest of the pattern?”
Shara put the question to the AI. “Assume,” she said, “that after Tinicum 2502 they returned to the original track.”
“Here,” said Mark, brightening a nearby star.
Tinicum 2116.
“Brilliant, Shara,” I said.
She smiled. “I have my moments.”
I took her to lunch. It seemed the least I could do. We went to the Hillside, got a table by a window, ordered drinks, and sat back to talk about lost interstellars.
“Tinicum’s planetary system will probably have a diameter of about eight billion klicks,” she said. “But the sun’s gravitational influence will reach out several times that far. If the Seeker ’s orbiting one of the planets, you should have no trouble finding it.”
“But if it’s in solar orbit-”
“-You’re going to want to pack a few meals.”
Yeah. That was the next order of business. It would take the Belle-Marie, which had only basic navigation equipment to conduct the search, a long time. Maybe years.
“Can Survey help?”
“I can let you have a piece of hardware, a telescope, that should move things along nicely.”
“Shara,” I said, “you’re a warm, wonderful human being.”
“Right. What do I get in return?”
“I’ll pay for lunch.”
“You’re already paying for lunch.”
“Oh.” I thought about it. “You want to come along? Be there when we find it?”
She made a face as if I’d just offered a plate of chopped squid. “I don’t think so. I know it’s historically big stuff, but I’m just not an enthusiast. Not enough to spend that much time on shipboard. You’ll probably be out there a month or two.”
The food came. Sandwiches and drinks. There was a guy at a window table trying to catch Shara’s eye. She seemed not to have noticed. “When you find it,” she said, “you publicly share credit with Survey-”
“Done.”
“-And agree to give us access to the discovery. Which is to say you and your boss don’t strip the ship before we get there.”
“We’ll want to take some stuff. Just a bit.”
“Keep it modest. Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
She looked at me. “I mean it, Chase.”
“I know. It won’t be a problem,” I said.
“Okay.” She tried her drink, but her mind was elsewhere. “The truth about Survey,” she said after a hesitation, “what we don’t admit publicly, is that our prime interest is finding another civilization. That’s not official, of course. Officially, we want to inventory what’s out there. Each system goes into the catalog. Physical details about suns and worlds. Characteristics and arrangements of the planets in each system. Any odd features, and so on.
“But the people in the ships know that most of the information they bring back goes into File and Forget. I mean, who really cares about the surface temperature of one more gas giant?”
“So you’re telling me-?”
“-Inspection of gas giants is generally done at long range and tends to be hit-and-run.
Ditto, worlds too close in, or too far out. The ships are required to survey everything in the system, but we generally will not go in close. You know that. You used to work for us. That means, if the Seeker is orbiting a planet, the planet would most likely be in the biozone. So you want to start there.”
“We don’t even know for sure it’s in the system.”
“That’s what makes it a challenge.” She took the first bite out of her sandwich. “Good stuff,” she said. “I love this place.”
“Tell me about the telescope.”
“Okay, we’ll need to coordinate getting it for you.” She spotted the flirt and looked bored. “When are you leaving?”
When I got back to the office, I reported the conversation to Alex, who pumped a fist in the air. “I believe we’re in business,” he said.
I also told him about Windy’s call.
“Ollie Bolton.” He made a face. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I don’t think there’s much we can do. Short of physical assault.”
“I don’t, either.”
“You don’t seem all that annoyed.”
“It’s part of the business,” he said. “We got outsmarted.”
“It’s not part of the business. It’s bribery.”
“Let’s not worry about it for the moment, Chase. We have bigger things to think about.”
The Belle-Marie didn’t have a mount for the telescope, so there was a delay of several days while a cradle was prepared and installed on the hull.
While that was going forward, Alex tried to check on Josh Corbin, the man who’d visited Delia and questioned her about the Seeker. But we got no useful information beyond what we already knew: He was an occasional consultant for Bolton.
Meanwhile a package arrived for me at the office. It carried a greeting card: Chase, I’ve never forgotten you. Letting you get away was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ll call this evening. Jerry.
There had been a Jerry Unterkefler in my life a few years back, but he hadn’t struck me as the passionate type.
Last year, during the Polaris business, when several attempts were made on our lives, we bumped up to class-A security coverage. I was about to open the package when it paid off. Jacob told me to put it down, gently, warn Alex, and for both of us to get out of the house.
We stood on the lawn an hour later while police carried the box off. “Clearance nanos,” Fenn told us. “They’d have turned the house into a park with three stone benches in about four minutes’ time.” He looked at me. “ You’d have been one of the benches.”
That was unsettling.
“Who’d want you guys dead?” he asked.
We had no idea who would go so far as to try to kill us. We spent an hour with him, answering questions, trying to zero in on suspects. We told him about the Seeker, and about Josh Corbin. And about Ollie Bolton.
“You think Bolton’s behind this?”
Alex said he didn’t know. I’m no fan of Bolton’s, but I couldn’t believe he’d try to kill anyone. “How would you get your hands on these things?” I asked. “On the nanos?”
“We’re looking into it. They’re designed for industrial use. Not hard to get.
Unfortunately.”
That night they located Jerry Unterkefler and hauled him downtown for an interview.
Actually, it was good to see him again. But I knew he wasn’t behind it.
Fenn called to warn us to be careful, take no chances, and not to hesitate to let him know if we felt threatened.
Truth was, we already felt threatened, and we were glad another flight on the BelleMarie was coming up.
Two guys from Tech Support attached the telescope, which they called a Martin, after Chris Martin, who is believed to be the first to use this specific type. Back in ancient times. They connected it to the ship’s AI, ran a couple of tests, and told us we were all set.
This time, of course, Alex was coming. We logged in for a morning departure, but couldn’t get rooms at either of the Skydeck hotels the night before, so we were forced to sleep on board. We had dinner at Karl’s, a sedate Dellacondan restaurant. It’s Alex’s favorite at Skydeck. Whenever we’re there, he tries to schedule time to eat at Karl’s. Afterward, he returned to the ship, while I went looking for a party. I found one, and didn’t get back to the Belle-Marie until we were within a couple hours of launch. Not that it mattered. Once we were away from the station, we’d need nine hours to build up a charge, so I’d have plenty of time to sleep. Alex was up when I got there, and he looked at me disapprovingly. But he didn’t say anything.