Everyone knew that someone or something had stolen the Earth. All of them were afraid, and a few even had the nerve to step forward and fight against the unseen enemy, willing to pit a tiny human’s strength against such mighty powers. Lucian was of that number—but with him it was different.
With him, it was personal. With sudden inspiration, Vespasian understood Lucian’s anger toward Larry. He blamed Larry, directly, personally, for what had happened. Larry had pushed the button. Because that button was pushed, Lucian’s city was half-wrecked. Lucian’s father had all but single-handedly saved that city, years before. In the Dreyfuss family, you inherited responsibilities. Lucian felt himself responsible for Central City’s safety.
Which was, of course, absurd. And completely understandable. Damn it. Vespasian shrugged. Or maybe he had gotten it all completely wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.
“Tell me again why we can’t just put a radio transmitter up alongside the wormhole and broadcast through it,” Lucian said. “I thought that was the original idea.”
“It was, and we put some embroidery on it,” Vespasian said, glad for the change of subject. “Mostly the problem was that the wormhole only opens once every hundred twenty-eight seconds, and remains open only three seconds. Not much transmission time. Also, we don’t know where in the sky Earth will be on the other side. No way to aim an antenna. And suppose the Charonians just close the hole to silence us? If the Saint Anthony can get through, it should be able to lock in on Earth and then broadcast and receive constantly. It’s got a massive datapack aboard, with everything we know about the Charonians on this end. With luck, it ought to be able to broadcast the whole dataset before it gets silenced. It can run some, if they attack it, maybe long enough to transmit the data Earth needs.
“And it will know where the wormhole is, with us on the other side, through its own inertial tracking system. It should be able to send lasergram messages back to us every hundred twenty-eight seconds.”
Vespasian glanced at his watch. “Launch in five minutes. And then two days until the Saint Anthony is in position.”
“Two days and a hundred twenty-eight seconds until we know for sure if Earth is still there,” Raphael said.
“Of course, there’ll be a fair amount of excitement before then,” Vespasian said.
Lucian looked over at the older man. “What do you mean?”
“Hell, you boys at the North Pole really are out of it,” Vespasian said. “Tomorrow, the first of the gee-point asteroids from the Belt drops onto Mars. McGillicutty, MacDougal and Berghoff should be on station already, waiting for it.”
Lucian grinned eagerly. “So things are finally starting to happen.”
Vespasian cocked an eyebrow skyward. It seemed to him that quite a bit had been happening up to now. Choosing not to reply, he turned toward the viewport and switched on the monitor screens that surrounded it. The Saint Anthony carried its own on-board cameras, and they ought to provide a hell of a view during the boost phase.
The massive, heavily armored probe was in place on the launch cradle now, in the hands of the automatic launching system. For reasons that he would have found hard to explain, Vespasian decided not to watch the countdown clock on this one. Instead he stared fixedly at the probe itself. So much was riding on this—more than any of them were willing to admit. Larry Chao’s work seemed to prove that Earth had been moved, not destroyed. But Vespasian was not quite ready to believe that.
Yes, he wanted to believe Earth had survived. Maybe the Saint Anthony would give him the proof he needed.
Unless the probe was destroyed in the wormhole, or arrived on the other side to find no sign of Earth, or somehow failed to send back any data. None of those outcomes would settle the point. Even if the probe functioned perfectly but did not locate Earth, that would mean nothing. They were merely assuming that this worm-hole—if wormhole it was—was linked to a piece of space near Earth on the opposite end. Anthony might well arrive light-years away from Earth.
Unless it found a rubble cloud identifiable as Earth’s remains, it could not demonstrate irrefutably that Earth was dead. They might send probes out forever and never confirm that. Space was vast.
And the Anthony was probably their one shot. Surely whoever controlled the wormhole would spot the probe coming through and attempt to destroy it. Surely they would find ways to prevent any other probes from making the trip.
Suddenly the probe seemed to quiver on the launch cradle as the linear accelerator was brought up to power. The launch computer activated the system, and the Saint Anthony vanished in a flash of speed.
Vespasian shifted his gaze to the monitor displaying the on-board camera view. The body of the Anthony was visible at the bottom of the screen. On either side, the Lunar landscape was whipping past at incredible speed, a sharp-edged blur of grays and whites. Vespasian barely had time to spot the end of the launching rail on the horizon before the probe reached rail’s end and leapt from the launch cradle, arcing gracefully up into space.
“On the wings of Saint Anthony ride all our prayers,” Vespasian whispered.
If either of the other two men heard, they did not respond. Each was alone with his own thoughts.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Eye in the Stone
They had come a hell of a long way just to look at a rock, Sondra thought. Out the forward viewport, Mars hung aloof and enormous, a battle-scarred globe of orange, red and brown. Spectacular though the view of Mars was, none of the passengers had eyes for anything but the asteroid that was rapidly approaching.
As if to emphasize that thought, Hiram McGillicutty quite abruptly shoved his way in front of both the women, so as to get a better view of the rock for himself. “Surely we should be able to see some detail by now,” he objected.
“Not just yet, Doctor. After all, it’s not very big,” Sondra said, speaking politely and resisting the temptation to swat this little man out of her way. Sondra glanced over at Marcia, who seemed to be working hard to suppress a smile. Sondra had learned a few things on the sprint flight from the Moon to Mars. First, that Marcia MacDougal was capable of putting up with a lot. Second, that McGillicutty was a lot to put up with. And third, that she had had enough of rush spaceflights. Even without McGillicutty’s abrasive personality aboard, the endless vibration of the engines and the cramped quarters did not make for a pleasant trip.
Well, at least this flight was near its end. “Any idea which asteroid this is yet?” Sondra asked.
“No, and there won’t be, either,” Captain Mtombe said in an irritated voice. Clearly he was getting damn tired of the question. “It could be any of hundreds that moved out all at once. Tracking was not very accurate. We can pick up an Autocrat’s Beacon signal from it—but the beacon is encrypted, and the Autocrat has refused to provide us with the encryption key. We know the rock was registered at one point, but nothing else. Besides, what difference could it make? A rock is a rock.”
Captain Mtombe, a rather dour and poker-faced dark-complexioned man with a slight West African accent, checked his displays. He seemed to be making a point of ignoring the image of the asteroid and concentrating on his instruments. “We should have a velocity match with the asteroid in twenty minutes. The asteroid is behind us and moving at speed, coming up on us, but decelerating. I’ve set our course so that it will match our present velocity as it comes alongside.