“What happened?”
“I don’t like the sight of blood.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, really. And anyhow, I wasn’t interested. I was an only child, so I became something of a major disappointment to them.”
“I can’t believe that.”
Her eyes lit up. “That’s kind of you, Mac.”
“How’d you come by Valentina? That isn’t Greek, is it?”
“I was named for my grandmother. She was Russian.” Her eyes sparkled with the recollection.
“So you can relate to Amy.”
“Amy and law school? Oh, yes. I know the drill.”
“Your parents’ attitude must have changed when you became a pilot.”
“They pretended it had. But you know how it is. My father used to go on about how much good I might have done as a doctor. He doesn’t do that anymore. Just walks around looking as if he’s burdened with sorrow.” She glanced back toward the hatch. “How many siblings does Amy have?”
“I think she’s an only child, too.”
“Same situation. All the eggs in one basket.” She laughed. It was a sweet sound, but there was sadness in it. “I wish we could have brought her father along. He might have learned something about her. And about himself.”
“Do you get to see them much? Your parents?”
“Not as much as I should. Visits can be painful.” She looked at him. “How about you?”
“I see my mother once in a while. My father’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “He and I were never close. My folks used to pray for me all the time.”
“I don’t blame them.” The smile spread across her features.
“Amy gets to be a lawyer. You’re a doctor. My folks wanted me to be a preacher.”
“Really? What happened?”
He shrugged. “I got lucky.”
“You wandered pretty far from home.”
“Sometimes you have to. I can sympathize with Beemer.”
“Who?”
“Oh, he’s caught up in a court case in North Carolina. He objected to the church school he went to.”
“Is he the guy who bopped the preacher?”
“Yes. Nice to know that occasionally someone rebels.”
“How about your mother?”
“I shouldn’t sell her short. She encouraged me to read. She didn’t always like the books I brought home. But she looked the other way when she had to.”
“So you didn’t keep the faith.”
“No. I didn’t last long.”
She got involved in a short conversation with Bill. Something about fuel correlations, but MacAllister knew she was stalling while she decided how to react. “It can be a major loss, Mac,” she said, finally. “There are times when you need to be able to believe in a higher power, or you can’t make it through.”
“So far,” said MacAllister, “I’ve managed.”
“The day’ll come.”
“Maybe. But the notion that we need a higher power, that’s more a human failing than a reflection of reality. The universe pays no attention to what we need. Truth is what it is, and the inconveniences it might cause us don’t change anything.”
“How did it happen? When did you walk away? Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes. I was about seventeen. Trying to hang on, because I was still afraid of the penalty for getting things wrong. Lose your soul. That’s pretty serious stuff.”
“So what exactly happened?”
“I don’t know. Read too much Dostoevski maybe. Saw the aftereffects of one tidal wave too many. Saw too many kids die in the Carodyne epidemic.”
“They had the medications available, didn’t they?”
“Yes. But there were bureaucratic problems. Delays of all kinds. So people died by the tens of thousands.”
“Things like that happen,” she said.
“Then there was Milly.”
“Milly?”
“A kitten. A stray. Abandoned by her mother. We brought her into the house when I was a kid. But she had Brinkmann’s. A disease. Too far along so they euthanized her.”
“I can see that would be traumatic for a kid. How old were you?”
“Nine. And I remember thinking what was the point of having a deity looking after the planet if he doesn’t take care of kittens? He gets credit for the handful of survivors when a ship goes down; but nobody ever seems to notice that, for those who died, he didn’t carry his weight.”
She was silent for a time. “You must have been a severe disappointment to him. To your father.”
“He never made the adjustment. Never forgave me. He wasn’t big on forgiveness. Talked about it a lot but didn’t practice it.”
“How’s your mother now?”
“Still prays for me.”
Bill broke in: “Valya, I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“What is it, Bill?”
“The monitor’s gone silent.”
THEY GOT LUCKY. The Salvator emerged into normal space barely an hour away from the monitor. MacAllister’s first act was to rotate the view on the display to satisfy himself no moonriders were in the vicinity.
“Put the monitor on the scope,” Valya said, from the bridge.
It looked untouched.
“Everybody stay strapped down. Let’s go take a look.”
MacAllister had never lacked for courage to confront the assorted power mongers with whom he had to deal. He had, on one occasion, even faced down the president of the North American Union. But he didn’t like taking physical risks, and the knowledge that an unknown, and unpredictable, force was running around out there left him wondering whether they should take the hint and leave. The moonriders had probably disabled the monitor. And they might well be prepared to disable anyone who showed up in the area. But with two women present and apparently heedless of the risks, it was difficult to say anything.
Eric and Amy, on the other hand, were enjoying the experience. Amy, of course, wasn’t smart enough to recognize the danger. She had that same sense of indestructibility that everybody has at fifteen. Moreover, she wanted to be at the center of everything. One day, he knew, she would drive some poor guy crazy.
Eric’s problem was that he had seen too many action vids. He visualized himself as the free-swinging sim hero, Jack What’s-His-Name. And, of course, there was no point reminding him that, whatever the odds Jack faced, he always had the writers on his side.
Valya put them on course toward the monitor and began to accelerate. MacAllister sank back into his chair. “Do we see anything moving anywhere?” he asked.
“Nothing that’s not in a standard orbit, Mac. If we spot anything, I’ll let you know.”
Amy looked at him and grinned. “Glad you came, Mr. MacAllister?”
“Oh,” he said, “you bet, Amy. Wouldn’t have missed it.” He tried to deliver the line straight, but she picked something up and looked at him oddly.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “We can run pretty fast if we have to.”
“No, no,” he said, as if personal safety were of no concern. “It’s not that.” He tried to think what it might be. “I was just anxious to get a look at the asteroid.”
NONE OF THE monitor’s status lamps worked. “General power failure, looks like,” said Valya.
“Could that happen naturally?” asked Eric, as they pulled alongside.
“Oh, sure.” Valya suited up and headed aft. Eric asked whether she wanted company.
“No,” she said. “Thanks anyhow. Nothing you can do.”
She disappeared below. Hatches opened and closed. They heard the whooshing sounds of decompression. The ship moved slightly and aligned itself more closely to the monitor, which floated just outside the cargo doors.
MacAllister remembered a favored theme in popular sims and cheap novels, in which a monster is brought aboard a ship inadvertently. Usually, a settlement had been wiped out, cause unknown. The rescue ship gathers
evidence and starts home. And the thing creeps out of a canteen and, within twenty-four hours or so, is terrorizing the ship. While he thought about that, the cargo doors opened. Bill switched to zero gee, moved the Salvator slightly to starboard, and the instrument floated inside. Valya disconnected the monitor’s telescopes and sensors. He watched her work over the unit, poking and prodding and running tests.
“Nothing jumps out at me,” she said at last. “It has no power. But we pretty much knew that.” She began opening panels in the device.
“Can you tell why not?” asked Amy.
“Hang on a sec.”
“You think the moonriders did it?” Eric asked.
The future pilot shook her head. “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t the monitor have seen them coming?”
“Yes,” said MacAllister. “We would have had pictures.”
“It’s the calibrator.” She’d plugged a gauge into one of the slots. “It failed, we got a surge, and everything blew out.”
“Could the moonriders have done it?” persisted Eric.
“No. I’d say it’s just a routine breakdown.” Then she was talking to the monitor: “Let’s see now… Should be one here somewhere… There we go.” And to her passengers: “I’m going to install a replacement. It’ll only take a few minutes. Then we’ll relaunch and be on our way.”
Eric looked disappointed.
WHEN VALYA WAS finished, she ran more tests, reattached the monitor’s parts, put it back outside, and came back up to the common room. “All right,” she said, “let’s go take a look at the asteroid.”
Yes, thought MacAllister, there was the mystery. Why were the moonriders interested in a piece of iron? He tried to keep his imagination on a leash. But he found himself considering the possibility that it might contain an inner chamber, perhaps with a ghastly secret. Or maybe Amy was right, and the thing was a fuel depot. Or maybe it was a rest stop of some sort. On the other hand, if any of those explanations was valid, why adjust its orbit? “How long to catch it?” he asked Valya.
She finished climbing out of the e-suit harness and headed for the bridge. “A few hours.”
“And it’s still not going anywhere particular?”
“Not as far as I can see. It’s more or less inbound, toward the sun.”
MacAllister sat back and shook his head. How about that? I was right all the time. There are aliens, and they’re as incomprehensible as the folks in DC.
HE HADN’T APPRECIATED the size of the asteroid until the Salvator drew alongside. His perspective changed, and the long, battered wall outside the ship shifted and went underneath and became a rockscape. They were only a few meters above the surface, close enough that MacAllister could have reached down and touched the thing. Then the rockscape gave way, and they were looking into a gorge. “There’s the depression,” Valya said. Where the moonrider had gone.
She turned on the navigation lights and aimed them into the gorge. It was a long way down, maybe several hundred meters. “We’re not actually going down there, are we?” asked Eric.
“No need to,” she said. “We can see fine from here.”
MacAllister’s imagination was galloping. He half expected to find an airlock. Or, as Amy had suggested, fuel lines. But there was nothing unusual. Below them, the sides of the gorge drew gradually together. The moonrider must simply have wedged itself in, applied power, and proceeded to change the asteroid’s course. It just didn’t look possible. The asteroid was immense.
He looked across to the horizon. The asteroid was so small that all directions seemed sharply downhill.
Valya was still looking into the gorge. “How about that?”
“What do you see?” asked Eric.
“Not a thing.”
MacAllister nodded. “The dog in the night.”
Amy grinned. “It didn’t bark,” she said.
“Very good. I didn’t think kids today read Sherlock Holmes.”
“I saw the sim.”
“What are we talking about?” asked Eric.
“There aren’t any marks,” said Amy. “There should be marks if something wedged itself in here and shifted the asteroid onto a new course.”
“Ah,” said Eric. “You’re right. It does look pretty smooth out there.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Amy.
Valya pushed back her red hair with her fingertips. “Damned if I know. I don’t think there’s anything else to be done here. Unless we want to wait around a bit and see whether they come back.”
“Hide-and-seek,” said MacAllister. “We pull out, they show up. Maybe Amy’s right. Maybe they’re delinquents.”
Amy cleared her throat. Looked mock-offended. “I didn’t say that, Mac,” she said.
Valya sat with her head back, eyes closed. “Bill,” she said. “Where’s the asteroid headed?”
“Sunward, Valya.”
“We know that. Go beyond that. Several orbits if you have to.”
“Working.”
“It’s starting to look,” said Eric, “as if we’ll be going back with more questions than answers.”
“It will in time intersect with Terranova.”
Everyone stopped breathing. “When?”
“In seventeen years, five months. On its third orbit.”
“By ‘intersect,’” said MacAllister, “you mean collide?”
“That is correct, Gregory.”
Eric paled. “My God,” he said, “a rock this size—”
Amy nodded. “Would cause mass extinctions.”
“Makes no sense,” said MacAllister. “There’s nothing down there except the wildlife. Why would anybody want to wipe them out?”
“Maybe they want to terraform the place,” said Amy.
Valya sat up straight. “Whatever they’re about, it looks as if we can assume they’re not friendly. Bill?”
“Yes, Valya?” “I want to talk to Union.”
MACALLISTER’S DIARY
The plan is to hang around Ophiuchi for another day or so, on the off chance the moonriders will come back. I’m not entirely sure that’s such a good idea since we have nothing with which to defend ourselves. But Valya suggested it, and of course Amy was all for it. Amy’s for everything. I’m pretty sure Eric had reservations, but he kept them to himself. I think it’s crazy.
Since we now know the moonriders are a potential threat, it’s the courageous thing to do. Right and noble and all that. Still, that doesn’t make it a good idea. The odd thing is I’d bet Valya, left to her own devices, would also not stick around. But nobody wants to look bad. Probably, if the Salvator were carrying four males, or four women, it would be sayonara, baby, we’re out of here.
—Friday, April 10
chapter 23
Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it.
—Gregory MacAllister, “The World in the Sky”
Neither Eric nor Amy wanted to leave. “This is where the action is,” Amy said, after they’d watched a grim-faced Peter Arnold tell them to get well clear of 36 Ophiuchi. Put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the moonriders. Don’t talk to them. Don’t answer if they say hello. “How do we ever find out about them if we run?”
Valya put an arm around her shoulder. “No choice, glyka mou. We have to do what they tell us.”
When he was able to speak to MacAllister alone, Eric explained that the Academy was protecting Amy. “If she wasn’t on board,” he said, “nobody would really care about you and me.” He tried to make it into a joke, but MacAllister could see he believed it. The three adults were expendable.
That sort of perspective would never have occurred to MacAllister. And he readily dismissed it. Of course the Academy didn’t want to take any chances with Amy, but they also knew he was on board.
Valya kept her feelings to herself. She simply shrugged when the message ended and told them to buckle down. “Vega’s next,” she said. “We’ve backtracked a bit, so the jump will take longe
r than it would have from Origins.” A bit under two days, she added. Minutes later they were accelerating away from the asteroid.
Seventeen years.
How did these creatures think? Were they going to come back to watch the fireworks?
MacAllister disliked bullies. And people who were cruel to animals. Here were these malevolent sons of bitches, with all that technology, and they were like kids stomping on an anthill. Pathetic. He wondered whether they were related to the idiots who’d devised the omega clouds.
Whatever, he wasn’t unhappy to get away. The prospect of sitting around waiting for the moonriders to come back was not appealing. Who knew what they might be crazy enough to do? Still, with Valya on the scene, he tried to look dismayed that they were leaving. It was safe because he knew Valya, like a good captain, would listen seriously to the protests of her passengers but follow her instructions.
“What’s particularly annoying,” Eric said, “is that we came so close. If we’d stayed here the first time, we might have been able to wave them down. Say hello. Or tell them to go to hell. Something.”
Go to hell, MacAllister thought, would have made a great opening in a dialogue with another species. That would look inspirational in the schoolbooks. He immediately began thinking of other moving first lines. Stick it in your ear, you nitwits.
Get your sorry asses on the next train out of town.
Sorry, boys, but we don’t cotton to strangers here.
He sighed. Imagined himself as a sheriff in the long ago, standing quietly in the dusk with a six-gun on his hip, watching three horsemen slink away.
ERIC WAS GENUINELY frustrated. All his life he’d been watching other people come back on the Academy’s ships after scoring triumphs. We found an ancient city here. And a new type of bioform there. We rescued the Goompahs. We did this and we did that. And there’d always been a world of acclaim waiting. Eric had led the cheers. Now first contact with a technological species was, finally, within reach, the golden apple, the ultimate prize, and he was being pushed aside.
He thought about getting on the circuit to Hutch and demanding she change the directive. But he knew she would not. She wouldn’t risk the girl under any circumstances.
At this moment, they were scrambling at the Academy to staff another mission and get it out here. Somebody else, a bunch of overweight academics who had spent their lives in classrooms, would get the assignment, and they’d be the ones to say hello. And they’d come back afterward and everyone would shake their hands.
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