Starhawk (25 page)

WHEN THE
GROSVENOR
surfaced a quarter million kilometers beyond the Moon, the media came out in force. The intensity of the coverage didn't quite match what the schoolgirls received when they came back on the
Copperhead
, but it was close. Quinn and his people and their family members had been on HV daily during the rescue effort, and consequently a wide audience had gotten to know them. The ship docked at Union, where Easy Barnicle and the five people he'd rescued transferred to a special shuttle, which they rode into DC. A large crowd was waiting for them, and a band played “The Green Hills of Earth” as they filed into the waiting area. Later that day, parades marched in Shanghai, Boston, and in Barnicle's hometown, Baltimore. They were greeted at the New White House by President Norman and the First Lady. They made the rounds of the talk shows, where Quinn announced that he'd sold a book to Bartram Publishing, and a rumor began to spread that a movie was already in the works.

During an appearance on
Live With Lennie
, Barnicle described his feelings when he'd handed out the food and water and watched everybody dive in. “We'd warned them not to wolf down the chow. Not to eat too much. But I don't think anybody was worrying much about that. I'll tell you, Lennie, I watched those folks go after those meatballs, and I don't think I've ever felt that good in my life.”

 * * * 

THE FOLLOWING MORNING,
a summons came in from Frank. Patricia was also in his office when Priscilla arrived. They were talking, but the conversation stopped when she came through the door. Frank pointed to a chair, and the director delivered a wary smile. “Good morning, Priscilla,” she said. She smiled again, checked the time, and got up. “I have to go, guys. Frank, it's all yours.” And she strode out of the office.

He closed the door. “Priscilla,” he said, “you've made it pretty clear you want to get back on the bridge.”

“Absolutely,” she said.

“Are you familiar with Orfano?”

“Sure. That's the world they found adrift a few years ago.”

“That's correct. The Academy wanted to trace as much of its history as they could. So they sent a team out there three or four weeks ago.”

“The
Vincenti
.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “They reached the place five days ago and went into orbit. But they missed their position report this morning.”

“It could just be a communication breakdown,” she said. “The AI might have malfunctioned. Or maybe a temporary loss of power.”

“Of course. Or it could be something serious. We don't know. And the Academy is not happy. After this Teegarden business, everybody's a bit jumpy.”

“I assume the Academy's sending somebody out to see what happened?”

“They don't have anybody in position to react.”

“They want us to help.”

“Correct.”

Priscilla couldn't resist. “Is the
Grosvenor
available?”

“There's nothing funny about this, young lady.”

“Sorry, Frank. You have more experience with this kind of thing than I do.”

“I'm glad you recognize that, Priscilla.” He was trying to be patient and to let her see that it wasn't easy. “We're taking a lot of heat right now.”

“So what—?”

“Fortunately, Orfano is pretty close. It's only a little more than four light-years. There's nobody even remotely closer to it than
we
are.”

“Frank, I'm ready to go. I assume we'll be using the
Baumbachner
.”

“It's all we have.”

“Okay. It's going to need a quick maintenance check. And refueling.”

“We've started the process, Priscilla.”

“What about the tours?”

“This is more important. We're replacing them with the virtual tour that we used to use. It won't be quite as lively as you've been, but—”

“Good enough. I'll be ready to go in a half hour.”

The creases in Irasco's face deepened. “I knew we could count on you. But we don't know what you might run into out there. So we don't want you going alone.”

“That's not a problem. I can take somebody to help out. One of the technicians. Maybe Ursula—”

“Actually,
you're
the person going along to help out, Priscilla.”

She frowned. “How do you mean, Frank?”

“You're going to find out about this anyhow, so I might as well tell you now. You weren't our first choice. We needed someone with more experience. Don't think we don't have the utmost confidence in you, but if we sent someone out there who'd just gotten her license, and anything went wrong—”

“Who is it?”

“We called Jake. And asked him to go.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Okay. So we're both going?”

“Yes.”

“And he said that he'd go if I was included?”

He raised a hand in defense. “Don't get me wrong. We were going to offer you a spot as well. And do me a favor: Don't tell him I told you.”

“Where is he now?”

“On his way. He'll be here on the evening shuttle out of DC. So, all we need is for you to be ready when he gets in.”

 * * * 

SHE MOVED HER
gear down to the ship and called Ops. Yoshie answered. “Have we heard yet from the
Vincenti
?”

“Negative, Priscilla. They're still quiet.”

“Let me know if anything comes in. Okay?”

“Absolutely. I understand they're sending you on the mission.”

“Looks like.”

“Well, good luck.”

Then she called her mother. “Heading out on a flight, Mom.”

“Good for you,”
she said, pretending to be enthusiastic.
“Where to?”

“A runaway planet. It's not far. We'll only be gone a few days.”

Mom's breathing changed.
“What's a runaway planet, dear?”

Priscilla explained.
“Sounds cold,”
Mom said.

“I'll take a sweater.”

“Okay. Just be careful, all right?”

“Sure, Mom.”

“Well, enjoy yourself. When are you leaving?”

“In a few hours.”

“Call me when you get back. Okay?”

 * * * 

THERE WAS A
better than fair chance that the people on the
Vincenti
would fix the problem and announce that everything was okay. And the mission would be scrubbed. She desperately didn't want that to happen.
But what kind of human being am I that I'm hoping they don't call in? That a potentially lethal situation doesn't turn out to be minor because I don't want to spend the next few days in my office?

She stowed her gear and tied her link into the ship's comm system. Then she ran a systems check. When she'd finished, she reviewed everything that was known about Orfano.

There wasn't much. The wandering world had been discovered several years earlier when it got between the Marcellus Cloud and the L2 Space Telescope. Nobody paid any attention to the shadow until a researcher going over the records noticed it. They went back to the L2 and, although the operational staff thought the effort a waste of time, instituted a search and relocated the object. It
was
, they realized, a planet that had become detached from its parent sun and was now headed gradually outward toward the galactic rim.

A mission had been dispatched last summer to take a look. They'd spent several days in orbit. The surface temperature was somewhat warmer than they'd expected, reaching, in some places, -170 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere was about 10 percent oxygen, but otherwise they found nothing out of the ordinary. After they'd returned, however, analysts at the Academy detected surface features they found hard to account for. Ridges curved across the landscape with near-geometric precision, almost as if they'd been carved from the rock. Mountains in many places were smoothed, rounded, generally shaped like domes. In other areas, they resembled turrets. The mission reports indicated that the crew had taken a close look but had dismissed the configuration as natural surface features. “No sign of life,” they'd concluded. “Life not possible under these conditions.”

Nevertheless, there were doubts. So, eventually, a second mission had been dispatched. That was the one that had missed its most recent position report. The
Vincenti
.

 * * * 

PRISCILLA'S JOURNAL

Ready to go.

—February 4, 2196

FRANK WAS WAITING
at the terminal with a tentative smile. He offered Jake his hand. “Good to see you. We hated to disrupt your retirement, but we really needed someone we could rely on.”

“You still haven't heard from them?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Does the terminal know to deliver your bags directly to the
Baumbachner
?”

“Yes.”

“All right. We want you to get going as soon as you're able. We'll have a room waiting at the Starlight when you get back.”

“Thanks.” They walked out onto the concourse.

“Jake,” said Frank, “I know you blame us for what happened with the
Gremlin
. But—”

“I don't blame anybody, Frank. The system is what it is. It's what we signed up for. Is Priscilla waiting in the ship?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” They stopped in front of the elevators. “I assume you guys did a thorough check of the
Baumbachner
?”

“Yes. It's in good shape.”

“I hope so.”

They reached the elevators. Frank pushed the button. But he never took his eyes from Jake. “Have you been in touch with Priscilla since you left here?”

“A couple of times, Frank. Why?”

“I don't think she's been very happy working for us. I just wanted to let you know so you go easy on her. She tends to get a little emotional sometimes.”

The elevator opened. Jake got in. A woman in a station uniform joined him. “I never noticed a problem,” Jake said.

“When she was with you”—Frank held the door open—“when she was with you, she was doing what she cared about. But she's had to make some adjustments here. Anyhow, just in case, you may want to cut her some slack.”

“All right, Frank. And we'll let you know as soon as we have something.”

 * * * 

PRISCILLA WAS WAITING
on the bridge. She broke into a big smile as he came through the hatch, got up, and threw her arms around him. “Jake,” she said, “you have no idea how glad I am to see you again.”

“Just like old times, huh?”

“Umm—I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“Well, Frank asked me not to say anything. But I know you put pressure on him to let me go along.”

“My pleasure, Priscilla. I figured you were probably tired putting together payrolls.”

“I don't have much to do with payrolls.”

“Well, making sure they have a decent supply of lubricants, then. Whatever. How's it been going?”

“Okay,” she said.

“How's Tawny?”

“Tawny's fine. She likes Princeton.” She sat back down, and he climbed in beside her.

“It won't go like this forever, babe. Just stay with it. Eventually, they'll figure it out.”

“I don't really have any complaints, Jake. I don't guess I've made it easy for them.”

“They mean well, Priscilla. Just try not to alienate them, okay?”

“Sure.”

He studied the panel. “You run the check-off yet?”

“We're primed and ready to go.”

The bridge was retro. It looked like something out of an old movie. “Is this thing really safe?” he asked.

“I hope so.”

“So do I.” He looked at the time. “We can get started as soon as my bags show up. I probably should have brought them down myself.” Priscilla glanced at the control panel. Then at Jake. “Stay where you are,” he said. “You're in command. I'm just here as an observer.”

She smiled. “You're one of the great men of our time, Jake.”

He actually blushed. “Whatever, but I don't guess I'll be much use if my stuff doesn't show up soon.”

She called the terminal, asked about the bags, nodded, and disconnected. “They're on the way.”

“You seem to be in a hurry, Priscilla.”

She laughed. Cleared her throat. “You want the truth, Jake?”

“Sure.”

“I want to get submerged before Wauken calls in, and they cancel the mission.”

“Isha Wauken? Is she on the
Vincenti
?”

“Yes. You know her?”

He smiled. “An old girlfriend.”

 * * * 

THEY EASED OUT
between the launch doors, turned to their assigned course, and began to accelerate. “By the way,” she said, “I should introduce you to our AI. Her name's Myra.”

“Good evening, Captain Loomis,” said the AI.

“Hello, Myra,” Jake said. “Nice to meet you.”

“The feeling is reciprocal.” Her seductive tone surprised Priscilla.

“Does she have a sense of humor?” Jake asked. “Or is that the way she normally talks?”

“It's the first time I've heard her do that. I think you have a fresh conquest.” She checked the gauges. Then: “How's it feel to be back?”

“Better than I'd expected. In fact, sometimes I'm sorry I left.”

“Jake, may I ask a personal question?”

“Sure.”

“Did they force you out? I never had the impression you really wanted to leave. You said you did, but—”

“Well, no, actually I didn't want to leave. But I wasn't forced out. At least not by Frank or Patricia.”

“Then by whom?”

He looked at her. Felt a surge of regret. “By
you
, Priscilla.” Her eyes went wide, and she stared at him. “It's okay. I just—What? I couldn't face people around here after we lost Joshua.”

“Jake—”

“Let's just let it go, okay?”

“So why'd you come back?”

“Because somebody else out there might need help. And they didn't have anybody else.” And he realized immediately he shouldn't have said that.

Priscilla turned a laser gaze on him, but she didn't say anything.

“I didn't mean it that way, Priscilla. When Frank called, I thought about backing off, but I wasn't sure they'd have been willing to send you on your own. You're still new at this, and they don't want to take any chances of anything more going wrong. They don't know you the way I do. I mean, you could have gone out there and performed like Captain Brandywine, and they'd still have taken some flak for sending out a relatively inexperienced pilot.”

She softened. The anger faded. “Well,” she said, “thanks. Especially for getting me included in the deal.”

“It seemed like the least I could do. Though I wasn't sure you'd want to go.”

“Of course I want to go. You think I wanted to sit in that office back there while you went out and did the mission?”

“I needed to be doing something useful,” he said. “I was tired just sitting on the front porch watching the world go by.”

 * * * 

THE EARTH, OF
course, dominated the sky. Fleecy clouds floated over Asia, which was ablaze with city lights.

“We'll be making our jump in a few minutes,” said Priscilla.

Jake checked to be sure his harness was secure. Sometimes the transition could be a bit rough. “Okay,” he said. “Whenever you're ready.”

She leaned over the mike. “Ops, this is
Starhawk
. We're ready to make our jump.”

“Who?”
The guy at the other end sounded startled.

“Kidding,” she said. “Make that
Baumbachner
.”

“Oh. Okay,
Baumbachner
. Roger that.”

“Has the
Vincenti
reported in yet?”

“Negative. We've heard nothing at all.”

 * * * 

SHE MADE HER
jump into transdimensional space. “Time to target,” she told Jake, “thirty-three hours.”

“Who's on the
Vincenti
?” he asked. “Other than Isha?”

Priscilla checked her notes. “Larry Martin and Gunther Hahn, both physicists, and Otto Schreiber, a doctoral candidate from Leipzig University. Martin's described as a planetologist, whatever that is.”

“All right.”

“Making sure we don't have more people than we can carry back, Jake? Just in case?”

“No. I don't think Frank would make that mistake again. I was just wondering if there'd be any more familiar names.”

“Are there?”

“No. Just Isha.”

“How close were you?”

“It wasn't much more than a few dinners.”

 * * * 

WHEN PRISCILLA RECEIVED
responsibility for the
Baumbachner
, she took time to update its library. It had originally been not much more than a sparse collection of thrillers and technobooks. Those were still there, of course. But she'd added thousands of titles: novels, biographies, history, science, even some theological tracts. There were movies dating back two and a half centuries. “It doesn't sound,” Jake said, “as if working for Frank takes much of your time.”

“The job is pretty much whatever I make it,” she said. “Mostly they want me there in case they need a pilot. And to do tours.”

“Does Myra play poker?”

It was a facetious question, of course. Myra was capable of playing all kinds of games, including multiple hands of poker, if need be, and doing it as separate entities. She was also capable of faking enthusiasm.

Ultimately, they mostly just talked. They watched a couple of movies, and went on a guided tour of the American Museum of Natural History. Priscilla used one of the ship's imagers and spent hours combing through visuals from its interstellar library, looking for special effects she could plug into her tours back at Union. She recorded spectacular pictures of gas giants poised over mountaintops and dinosaur-like creatures drinking from rivers and explosive bursts erupting from solar surfaces. She played them for Jake, projecting them into the center of the passenger lounge, soliciting his opinion.

She did a few crossword puzzles while he watched football and baseball games that Myra had located for him, featuring the Pittsburgh teams, of which he was a longtime fan.

Jake missed the mountain cabin, the wind coming out of the trees, hanging out with the poker players, and having dinner with Alicia. It just seemed that, no matter how he did things, dissatisfaction crept in. There was always something missing.

 * * * 

AFTER ALL THESE
years, he was still fascinated by conditions outside the ship when it was submerged. Though they were covering immense distances in an impossibly short time, one could never have guessed that by looking through any of the portals. The
Baumbachner
seemed to be almost adrift in a dark fog. Nothing else was visible. They might have been moving at possibly two knots. Certainly no more than that.

It was a completely different universe out there. He'd read about Barber space, as it was called. But none of the explanations made any sense to him. The physicists talked of multiple dimensions and quantum relativity. And he was pretty sure that, mathematics aside, they didn't have a grasp of it any more than he did.

But it didn't matter. It was there, it worked, and it opened large sections of the Milky Way to exploration. And that, in the end, was all he cared about.

An hour or so away from Orfano, he sat alone on the bridge, with a book on the auxiliary display. It was a collection of cartoons from
Punch
. Inevitably, though, his gaze would find the quiet mist outside.

 * * * 

PRISCILLA'S JOURNAL

If we're going to do this kind of thing rationally, we're going to need better communications. I don't know if they'll ever be able to reduce the amount of time a signal needs to get from one place to another. I suppose you really can't complain when a transmission covers almost six light-years in a day. And it would be helpful if we could talk to each other while we're submerged. Having to wait until we complete the jump before we can find out what's happening is not convenient. We'll probably eventually get better technology. And this equipment will wind up in museums.

—February 5, 2196