Starhawk (26 page)

JAKE HAD LONG
since lost count of the number of flights he'd logged. But this was the first time he'd surfaced in an area with no sun. Well, maybe that was something of an exaggeration. He'd been out to Neptune once. Sol, from there, wasn't much more than a bright star. But at least you knew it was there. In this case, light-years from everything, he felt—What? The emptiness? The distances?

“Myra,” said Priscilla. “Any sign of Orfano?”

“Nothing yet. It may take some time.”

“All right. Let's see if maybe we can get lucky and locate the
Vincenti
. Go to broadcast.”

“Okay. Ready when you are.”

“
Vincenti
, this is
Baumbachner
. We have just arrived in the area. Do you read?”

She switched over and listened to the silence.

“
Vincenti
, answer up please.”

Nothing.

“I've got Orfano,” said Myra. “Range is seven hundred thousand kilometers.”

“That's not bad,” said Priscilla.

Jake agreed. “Considering how far we've come, that's about as close as you could hope for.”

“Unfortunately,” said Myra, “It's behind us. We're pulling away from it.”

“Wonderful,” Priscilla said. “Prepare to do a one-eighty.”

“It will require two hours to reverse movement.”

“Okay. Hold on a second, Myra.” She looked over at Jake.

“No,” he said, “I'm fine. Start braking whenever you're ready.”

 * * * 

ORFANO WAS SLIGHTLY
bigger than Earth, with an equatorial diameter of thirteen thousand kilometers, and a gravity index at 1.1. Reports from the first expedition indicated warmer temperatures than would normally be expected with no sunlight. The experts attributed the condition, probably, to the presence of an iron core warmed by radioactives.

They were braking again, preparing to enter orbit.

Jake was at the controls while Priscilla sat quietly in the right-hand seat, looking out at gray clouds and an icy landscape. It was more exotic than any planetary surface she'd seen before. On terrestrial worlds, mountains usually came in clusters, divided by plains and hills. But the clusters were random, and the mountains scattered arbitrarily. Orfano's mountains and ridges resembled a frozen eruption. They possessed an unsettling symmetry. Long, curving lines of snowcapped peaks and valleys ran parallel to each other, cast in shades and tones of rock that formed circles and triangles. Or maybe not. She found that if she closed her eyes and looked again, the impression went away.

“I see it, too,” said Jake.

“What do you mean?”

“It looks as if it was landscaped.”

“Oh.”

“I'm not especially religious, but that place could have been put together by an engineer.”

When the angle was right, the ice glittered in the starlight, and the ground acquired a kind of pristine beauty. Nature in all its fractious, weathered clarity. “Maybe that's where you should have your cabin,” she said.

“It does have a certain charm, Priscilla. But it's a bit too exotic for my tastes. Myra, any sign of the
Vincenti
?”

“Negative, Jake.” The seductive tone was gone. Games were over. “We're not picking up anything.”

“Okay. Keep us informed.”

“Of course.”

He turned back to Priscilla. “It's early yet.”

“What do you think could have happened to them?”

“Well, we know they're not simply on the other side of the planet.” They'd been sending out transmissions for hours. “To be honest, I'm not optimistic. But maybe they developed a problem with their comm system. If they couldn't communicate with anybody, there wouldn't be much they could do. They weren't going to go all the way back to fix a transmitter. So they stay on, complete the mission, then go home. They might have done that and already left.”

“And we have to wait here until they get home, and Frank lets us know everything's okay?”

“Priscilla, you're a licensed pilot. What do you do if your comm system gives out and you have to return to base?”

She thought about it. “Oh,” she said.

“So what do you do?”

“Leave a satellite with a message.”

“Very good.”

“I'm embarrassed.”

You should be.
“It's okay,” he said.

After her performance with the
Gremlin
, he was almost relieved to find out she could be just as dumb as anybody else.

 * * * 

“THEY'RE NOT HERE,”
Myra said.

Priscilla looked out at the empty sky. “They must have gone back. And it looks as if I'm not the only one who forgets about satellites.”

“Or they went down,” said Jake.

She frowned. “I hope not.”

Starlight reflected from icy ridges and mountaintops. He could make out a long, jagged canyon near the horizon.

“So what do we do?” asked Priscilla.

“We expand the search. We'll keep looking until we find something or get recalled.”

“You think Isha would leave without putting out a satellite?”

“Anybody can screw up. But no, it's hard to imagine. Myra, set up the scanners for a ground survey.”

“Okay, Jake.”

“The
Vincenti
's big enough,” he said, “that if it went down, we should be able to find it.”

 * * * 

THEY MOVED OVER
a gray mist. The gorges, ridges, and mountains were hazy under the stars. The ground could not properly be described as rugged. It was rather the sort of terrain one might see in a portrait designed to emphasize the beauty of the natural order. Priscilla could not resist expressing her admiration. Meantime, Myra adjusted the angle of each orbit to expand the coverage, but the hours drifted by without result.

Eventually, they both slept in their chairs while the AI continued to monitor the scanners and scopes. Jake woke periodically only to drift back off, lulled by the murmur of the air vents. Then it was morning on the ship, if not in the world below, and the interior lighting adjusted accordingly. In several areas, the surface appeared to be obscured by storms. Priscilla woke. “Nothing yet?”

“Negative,” said Jake. “Let's get some breakfast.”

He released his harness, and Myra's voice broke the silence. “Object ahead,” she said. “It appears to be in orbit.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I am not sure.” She put it on-screen. Jake could make out nothing other than that it was tumbling. “It is much too small to be a vehicle.”

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

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.”

Jake split the screen. Compared the lights in the two sightings. “They're brighter now.”

Priscilla took a long look. “I think you're right,”

“We are at the same range,” said Myra.

It could have been a line of stalled cars in a heavy rainstorm. But the lights in the rear were growing brighter. Then they dimmed, and the enhanced illumination passed like a wave along the group toward the front. And faded.

“Holy cats,” said Priscilla. “Did you see that?”

The process started again. The rear of the line of lights brightened, and the effect once more moved forward.

“It's a signal,” said Jake.

“You mean for us?”

“I have no idea, Priscilla. Myra, is there any way that could be a signal from the
Vincenti
?”

“Jake, I cannot conceive how anyone on board could have created those images.”

“It's probably just a variation of ball lightning or something,” said Priscilla.

“I can't imagine ball lightning in this kind of climate.”

“Well, I'm open to a better explanation.”

“Check with me later.” They were drawing abreast of the lights now. “We're going to have to go down and look,” he said.

“Okay. We should be able to catch it on the next round.”

“Myra, transmission for Union.”

“Ready when you are, Jake.”

“Ops from
Baumbachner
. We are seeing lights below, in one area only. They're included in the transmission. We have no explanation for them. On next orbit, I'll take the lander down, and will let you know what they are.”

Priscilla took a deep breath. “They're just going to be some sort of electricity generated by the atmosphere.”

“You're probably right.” He was still looking at the images on the display. “I'll send everything back, and you can relay it to Union.”

Priscilla frowned and shook her head. No. “Jake,” she said, “I'm not going to let you go down there alone.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there may be some confusion here, Priscilla, about who's in charge.”

“Come on, Jake. You going to pull rank?”

“Yes, since I apparently have to. Look, Priscilla, it's just not smart for both of us to go. You know that as well as I do.”

“Jake—”

“I'll stay in contact with you the whole time. If anything happens, if we lose touch, give me an hour or so. If you still don't hear from me, clear out. Understand?”

“This feels like what happened last time.”

Jake sucked in air. “I hope not, Priscilla.”

 * * * 

BAUMBACHNER
LOG

This is a futile effort. Whatever dragged the captain's chair off the bridge and out of the ship could not have done it without wrecking the vehicle. It's been almost a week since they were last heard from. Even if someone had made it to the lander and managed to launch, there would not have been enough air to keep him alive all this time. But nobody's going to say we didn't try.

Priscilla thinks it's not a good idea for me to go down alone. Let the record show that she demanded to go along. I have had to order her to stay with the
Baumbachner
.

—Jake Loomis, February 8, 2196