“I wish you knew where it was located.”
“So do I.”
“Would you recognize it if you saw it?”
“No. I’ve no data on it.” There was a pained reflection in his eyes. “Why do you think it’s in this system?”
I tried to explain, but he got impatient. Told me to let it go. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not it.” He fell silent for a time. Then: “Margolia, ” he said. “Is that what you call it?
Our world?”
“Yes. I guess we do.”
“We could have done worse. He was a great man. Have you read him?”
“No. Not really.”
“He was a twenty-fifth-century philosopher. And a British prime minister.”
“So what was there about him that appealed to you?”
“He measured everything against reason. No intricate abstractions. No sacred texts.
Accept nothing on authority. As they said in an earlier age, ‘Show me the evidence.’ ”
“That sounds sensible.”
“ ‘Never lose sight of reality. The individual human life span is brief and, in the long view, inconsequential,’ he said. ‘We are children one day and signing out the next.
Therefore, in the brief moment we are allotted, live reasonably, be compassionate, and when your hour comes, accept it without histrionics. Never forget that your handful of hours is a supreme gift. Use them wisely, do not fritter them away, and remember that your life is not an entitlement.
“ ‘Most of all, live free. Free of social and political stricture. If there is such a thing as a soul, these surely are its components.’ ”
“Would Margolis have gone with you?”
“I’ve spoken with his avatar. It was one of the first questions I asked.”
“What was his answer?”
“He said no. Most assuredly not.”
“Did he say why?”
A smile deepened the lines around the corners of his mouth. “He called the plan grandiose.”
“Well,” I said, “there you are.”
The moment stretched into one of those silences where you could hear the murmur of electronics. Finally, I asked whether he had gone on the flight alone. “Or did you have a family?”
“My wife Samantha. And two boys. Harry Jr., and Thomas. Tommy.”
“How long had you been married?” I asked.
“Eight years at the time we left.” His eyes became intense. “I don’t even know what they looked like.”
“There were no pictures?”
“No. Whoever did the reconstruction of my persona either didn’t have a representation, or didn’t think it was important.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Alex was forever reminding me that avatars have no more feelings than the chair I was sitting in. It’s all an illusion. Just programing.
SEVENTEEN
We know that time is elastic. That it passes more quickly on the roof than in the basement, or at rest than in a moving vehicle. We know there are objects that may have occupied a place in the cosmos for several hundred million years although they themselves are not 60 million years old. We are accustomed to watching time take its toll on the physical world. Buildings crumble. People vanish. The pyramids wear down. But in the great vacuum that surrounds us, time seems suspended. Footprints, left ten thousand years ago on a lunar surface, endure.
- Orianda Koval,
Time and Tide, 1407 We almost gave up and went home. If Margolia was not in the system, it seemed unlikely that the Seeker could be there. Somehow, we’d gotten it wrong.
But we’d gone to a lot of trouble. And we had noplace else to look. So we stayed, and turned the Martin telescope loose. Two days later, Belle reported a suspicious object.
“High-albedo source,” she said. Highly reflective.
“Where?” I asked.
She showed me. “Eight AUs from our present position.”
“Can you give us any more information?” asked Alex.
“It’s in solar orbit.”
“That’s it? Can we get an image?”
A point of light appeared on-screen. A dull star.
“Enhance, please,” said Alex.
“It is enhanced.”
He didn’t sound hopeful. But what the hell? “Let’s go take a look,” he said.
Belle adjusted course and began to charge the engines. During the next few hours, she was able to report some details: “Preliminary analysis indicates long elliptical orbit.
It’s currently headed outward from the sun and will reach aphelion at seven point two AUs.”
“Sounds like a comet,” said Alex.
“Albedo’s not right.” We were belting down, getting ready to make the jump. “It looks as if it would require approximately eighty years to complete an orbit.”
Alex finished the coffee he’d been drinking and put the cup in the holder.
“It appears to be metal. Ninety-eight percent probability.”
The jump got us within two days’ travel time, and after about four hours the scopes gave us our first real look at the object. It was, indeed, a derelict. Once we’d established that, Alex beamed. Knew it all along.
It was in a slow tumble, and its exhaust tubes were pointed in the direction of one of the gas giants, which was only a few million kilometers away.
Six hours in, we were able to make out details, the streamlined body, thrusters, sensor mounts. Amidships, it carried the soaring eagle that we’d seen on the cup.
Seeker! “How about that?” said Alex. “But what the hell is it doing out here?”
At nine hours, we were able to make out its name, in the now-familiar English characters, on the hull.
As we drew closer, we became more aware of the sheer enormity of the vessel. It was the size of a small city. Eight giant thruster tubes aft, any one of which could have swallowed the Belle-Marie. Six levels of viewports. A hull that would have taken twenty minutes to circle on foot. An army of pods and antennas.
And“Uh-oh.”
Alex turned my way. “What is it, Chase?”
Two of the eight thruster tubes looked bent. They jutted at odd angles, off a few degrees from the others and from a line drawn down the center of the ship.
I’d seen pictures of the Crossmeer years before, after its jump engines exploded.
Everybody had died, because the blast had ripped holes in the ship and the air supply blew out before the hatches could close. The exhaust tubes had looked like these.
“They had an accident,” I said.
Alex turned back to the monitors. “Yes. That’s what it looks like.” He exhaled, and asked an odd question. “Do you think anybody might have survived?” He was speaking as though it had happened yesterday and there was still a chance to do a rescue. Being off-world can induce a sense of timelessness. Things don’t change much when you get away from wind and rain.
“It’s a big ship,” I said. “I don’t know. Depends on whether it got punctured in the wrong places.”
“Not a good way to go,” he said. “Out here.”
I didn’t think there was a good way to go, but I didn’t say anything.
It was hard to understand how the Seeker had come to be where it was. There was no habitable world in the system. What was it doing there? “It’s been a long time,” said Alex. “Maybe it just drifted in from somewhere else.”
“From where?”
“From wherever Margolia is.”
“The closest star is almost three light-years out. That’s way too far for just floating over.”
“Chase, we’re talking nine thousand years.”
“It’s too far. Under power, without jumping, it would need twenty-five thousand years to travel that kind of distance. At least.”
He shook his head. “Well, maybe they were in hyperspace. The engines blew, and the pilot pulled them out.” He looked the way he always does when confronted with a challenge. “That must be the way it happened.”
“I suppose that’s as good a guess as any. But it seems unlikely.”
There was nothing to be done until we got there, so Alex announced he was going back to his cabin. “Let me know if you see anything more.”
“Okay.”
“I have to get back to work.”
“What work?”
“The Blackmoor Medallions,” he said. “Looted during a civil disturbance three centuries ago on Morinda. Never seen since. They’d be worth millions.”
“You know where they are?” I said.
“I’m working on it.”