Priscilla was in the pilot’s seat. “Ready when you are, Jake,” she said.
He belted back down, and she changed course and fired the thrusters. The ship began to accelerate.
The object grew larger. It had right angles. “It is about the size of a human being,” Myra said.
Jake stared at it. “Probably just a chunk of ice.”
“It appears to have four legs,” said Myra.
It was acquiring definition. “Holy cats,” Priscilla said.
Jake gaped. It looked like a chair.
* * *
BAUMBACHNER LOG
We have found the Vincenti.
—Jake Loomis, February 7, 2196
Chapter 38
IT WAS THE same type of chair he was sitting in. Maybe slightly different armrests. It was tumbling slowly, and the restraint that would have secured its occupant drifted behind it. The back of the chair looked broken. No. Not broken. Twisted. They stared at it. “How could that have happened?” Priscilla asked.
The chair was slightly ahead of them, a few kilometers off to port, and at a slightly higher elevation. Priscilla adjusted for altitude, matched velocity, and, a few minutes later, they drew alongside. “I assume we want to recover it?” she said.
“Yes. Do it.”
She opened the launch doors. “Myra,” she said, “I’ll need you for this. Take over and get the chair.”
“Okay, Priscilla. I have it.” They felt a slight change as Myra angled the ship. Then they moved to port again. One of the scopes locked on the chair, and they watched it float into the cargo bay. “Chair is secure,” she said. “Closing up.”
* * *
THEY REMAINED ON the bridge for several minutes, scanning the area while the cargo bay repressurized. But there seemed to be nothing else out there. Then they went down below. The chair was afloat near the storage cabinets at the rear of the chamber.
“You don’t think this is another one of those antiterraforming attacks, do you, Jake?” she asked.
“Don’t know.” The base of the chair was torn apart, as if it had been wrenched out of the deck. “Explosion?” Priscilla asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s not scorched. And most of it looks okay.”
“So what happened?”
“I have no idea. Myra, any theories?”
“No, Jake. I do not understand it.”
Whatever it was, Jake had no expectation of finding survivors.
Isha, farewell.
* * *
THEY TOOK THE chair topside to the passenger cabin. Jake wedged it between cabinets and secured it with cable. Then he recorded an account of what they’d found, included some pictures, and sent it to Union. “They’re not going to be happy,” Priscilla said.
Jake grunted his response. There was no way this was going to end well. He hadn’t actually ever been close to Isha. He’d taken her out a few times, and even slept with her once, but there’d been no real chemistry on either side. At least not as far as he could determine. But he’d liked her. She’d been a good woman. She’d loved telling stories about how her family had reacted to her career choice. Absolutely crazy. It was a common narrative for pilots. Her dad had been a policeman, and he didn’t think riding around on a rocket was a good idea. For one thing, it wasn’t safe. For another, he’d argued, there was no future in spaceflight. “It’s all going to go away; and then where will you be?”
“How,” asked Priscilla, “can you explain any of this? How does this thing get torn out of the deck, but there’s no explosion?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said.
There was fear in her eyes. “At the moment,” she said, “I’m feeling a little bit spooked.” She stared at the chair. “What happened to you, anyhow?”
It’s definitely not a good sign, he thought, when you start talking to the furniture.
* * *
“DO WE WANT to continue the search on the ground?” asked Myra. “Or should we concentrate on looking for other objects up here?”
“Keep the sensors pointed down,” Jake said.
They continued shifting from orbit to orbit, looking out at a relentlessly unchanging sky. They ate a listless dinner in the passenger cabin and went back onto the bridge. Priscilla eventually put a book on her display and tried to lose herself in it. Jake played poker with three AI partners. And then, when he was expecting Myra II to lay down a flush against his three queens, she surprised him: “We have lights.”
“Lights?” Priscilla looked up from her book. Jake forgot about the game.
“Where?” he said.
They blinked on the display, glimmers in the cloud cover. Six glowing spots in the night. No, seven. In a line. “Off to starboard.”
“It’s a storm,” Jake said. “Lightning. That’s all it can be.”
“Jake,” said Priscilla, “it does not look like lightning.” For one thing, it was a steady glow.
“Okay. Lock in the position. We’ll take a look next time around.”
* * *
CIRCLING A COMPLETELY dark world was, for Jake, a new experience. There was a different sense of movement than one would get while orbiting Earth, or any planet in a star system. You did not, as normally happened, pursue the sun across the sky, pass beneath it, and eventually leave it behind. There was rarely any horizon. Instead, you traveled across an apparently flat landscape, which revealed only shadows and mist. It was a flat landscape that went on forever, a place made for ghosts. He wouldn’t have admitted it even to himself, but he was glad he wasn’t alone.
“The lights must have been reflections,” Priscilla said.
“Okay. But reflections of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a pity,” he said, “we didn’t find their AI instead of just a chair.”
“It would have helped. We should take McGruder on a flight like this. Maybe he’d change his mind about defunding the program.”
Jake grunted. “I don’t think I’d want to spend a week or two locked in here with a politician.”
“That’s a point.”
“What were you reading?”
“How Laura Kingman saved the space program. Back in the NASA days.”
“The woman who took out the asteroid.”
“And killed herself in the process.”
“I thought,” said Jake, “the consensus was that it would have missed anyhow. That it was close, but it wasn’t going to hit anything.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Priscilla. “At the time, she couldn’t be sure. So she took no chances.”
“Try to imagine your buddy McGruder doing what she did.”
“He’s not my buddy, Jake. But actually, we have no way of knowing what he would do.”
Jake tried to laugh, but it didn’t happen. He wondered whether he would have done it himself. He knew how he’d have answered that question a couple of months ago. Not so sure anymore. “Myra,” he said, “have you seen any more lights?”
“Be assured, Jake,” Myra said, “I’d have told you if I did.”
“I know.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
Because it had been time to change the subject. He saw that Priscilla understood it as well. “So how’s Roanoke treating you?” she asked.
* * *
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the site, the lights were still there, seven of them emitting a soft, golden glow. “Are they moving?” asked Priscilla.
“I don’t think so,” said Jake.
There was a pause. Then Myra: “Negative movement.”