"Eh?"
"I didn't see it. She's a career woman six years older than he is! Even so, that's it. He let her see him manipulating you for her benefit. I wonder if she'll buy it?"
Renner hadn't even decided if he liked her. That was not always the most interesting question. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of his brain, he had considered Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo to be his by default. Blaine was too young, Buckman and Bury were too old, and Kevin Renner was captain of Sinbad.
The problem lay in what she might want. Not money, nor entrée into certain levels of society; he could do that. But secrets... she loved secrets, and Kevin Renner's were not his to give away.
Blaine was too young, and he was a classic model of a Navy man-but Kevin Christian Blaine had been raised by Motie Mediators. Why was that so easy to forget? Renner began to watch him.
Sinbad in free fall could not be spun up. Chris Blaine was used to a bigger Navy ship. He was clumsy for the first couple of days. So was Joyce; she had not spent much time in space. Then they got oriented more or less together. Simultaneously, in fact.
You had to concentrate to see it, how often they occupied the same space. In any of the narrow passages they might pass without brushing. Joyce was still a bit clumsy, but Chris could eel gracefully past her, close enough to link magnetic fields, but without touching her at all. Like dancing.
The morning before Sinbad began deceleration, Joyce Trujillo looked different, and so did Chris Elaine. They both seemed a bit embarrassed about it, and they couldn't seem to avoid body contact.
Two centuries ago, Jasper Murcheson had cataloged most of the stars this side of the Coal Sack. He had numbered them in some haste for his Murcheson General Catalog, then filled in details at leisure.
Half those stars were red dwarves, such as this orange-white dot called MGC-R-31. Murcheson had collected more detail on the hotter yellow dwarves, those that might have habitable planets and particularly those that did. MGC-R-31 had a brown dwarf star companion at half a light-year's distance; Murcheson hadn't even known that much.
Kevin Renner knew it the moment he popped into the system. He knew because some unseen nearby mass had skewed his Jump point by several million miles.
It should be located, fast. It would move the I-point, too! Buckman and Renner set to work at once.
It was good to be in MGC-R-31 system, good to have something to do, to have an excuse to lock that door.
A week of Bury's strained good manners and Blaine's and Trujillo's body-contact formality had been getting on everyone's nerves ....r maybe only on Kevin Renner's. Buckman's needs gave him an excuse to do something about it. Renner had a section of Sinbad's lounge partitioned off to become Jacob Buckman's laboratory.
It was cramped for Buckman, very cramped for Buckman and Renner; visitors were impossible. They preferred using it that way to everyone's popping in and out of the small bridge compartment. The others tried not to interfere.
Search for a brown dwarf. First observe the red dwarf, find its plane of rotation. By then Buckman had calculated a series of distances and masses that might account for the shift in the Alderson point. Look at one locus of points, observe again, calculate again.
Dinner appeared from somewhere. Renner would have ignored it, but Buckman hadn't even looked up. Better to eat, and make Buckman eat too.
And breakfast... but by then they were done. Renner sighed in relief. He opened the door to the lounge and announced, "Nothing. We're here first."
"Allah is merciful," Bury said.
"How sure are you?" Joyce Trujillo asked.
Chris Blaine said, "Good question. You can't know where the Alderson point is going to be."
"I do know that there is no new Alderson point in this region," Buckman said. "As to where the incipient point will be, I've had to change the locus because of the companion. Not much. Brown dwarf stars don't radiate much. It's still an arc along here, still about a million klicks long. I moved it by a couple of light minutes. And it isn't there."
The arc Buckman's cursor made across the screen stretched away from the orange-white glare of MGC-R-31, toward the Coal Sack and an off-centered red peephole into Helclass="underline" Murcheson's Eye.
Renner touched a button on the console. "Agamemnon, this is Sinbad. We get a clean sweep. Do you? Over."
Agamemnon had popped out a few minutes ahead of Sinbad, separated by no more than the gap between Earth and Earth's moon. Now they were a few tens of thousands of miles apart, while Atropos moved ahead toward the hypothetical I-point. Agamemnon's response came immediately
"Sinbad this is Agamemnon. Affirmative. I say again, affirmative, there are no signs of any ships in this system. We are definitely here first. Is Lieutenant Blaine available?"
"Right here."
"Please stand by for the skipper."
"Right."
"So that's that," Joyce Trujillo said. She was all business now, as Blaine was all officer.
"For the moment," Bury said. "They will come. But now-now I believe Allah has given us this chance. We may yet lose it, but we have the opportunity."
"God is merciful," Joyce said. "He will not do everything and thus take away our free will and that share of glory that belongs to us."
"Biblical?" Renner asked.
She laughed. "Niccolo Machiavelli."
"Arrgh! Joyce, you have done it to me again."
Buckman said, "Horace? I've listed it as Bury's Infrastar. Your ship, your crew, your discovery."
Seconds late, Bury reacted. He smiled with effort and said, "Thank you, Jacob."
"Here's the skipper," the comm set announced.
"Blaine?"
"Yes, sir. We're all here."
"Some of my officers are suggesting this is a wild-goose chase."
"I would like nothing better, Commander," Horace Bury said. "But I do not believe that."
"Don't guess I do either. We're wondering what to do next. I don't mind admitting this isn't a situation I was trained to deal with," Balasingham said.
"Nothing complicated about it," Buckinan said. "Renner has us on a course to coast along the arc over the next..."
"Fifteen days."
"Fifteen days. Your other ships have our data."
Chris Blaine took over. "Sir, we've sent the data to Atropos, so he'll take up station ahead of us. The I-point will be in this region. I suggest that Agamemnon stay behind, that is, between us and the path back to New Caledonia. Maybe they can intercept. As for us, we make repeated passes until the I-point appears."
"All right," Balasingham said. "For now, anyway. The Viceroy's sending more ships." Short pause. "What if a Motie fleet comes through shooting?"
"Then we do what we can," Bury said.
"And maybe the horse will sing," Renner muttered.
Bury shrugged. He seemed amazingly calm. "The Moties have no control over the protostar. This will be as Allah wills, and Allah is merciful."
If Buckman turned off his intercom, as he frequently did, the only way to find out what he was doing was to bang on his door and risk his acerbic comments about disturbing his work.
He had left the compartment door open this morning. Buckman had been constantly in his laboratory or the adjacent lounge for over thirty hours. Kevin Renner and Chris Blaine had alternated waiting just outside the lab door, and it was Chris's turn. He'd been there an hour, with nothing to do. Then he heard a shout.
"By God!"
Chris went to the compartment door. Buckman was hunched over a console. His grin was wide
"What is it?" Chris asked.
"It's happening."
Chris didn't ask what. "How far away?'
"I'm only getting a flux reading. It's not stable yet, but it will be. It's tremendous! By God! Blaine, this is the best record of a new Alderson event anyone has ever got! Now we can set up for the visuals.'
"How far away, Doctor Buckman?"