Coming Home

by Jack McDevitt

  Alex said, “Whatever you like.” But he looked disappointed. I knew the game, but I caved anyhow, and we went with Casablanca.

  I’ll confess that I loved the film. And I was surprised to discover that another of my favorite songs, “As Time Goes By,” provides the central theme. When it was done, I watched with tears in my eyes as Rick and Captain Renault walked off across the airfield.

  * * *

  In the morning, I went back to work on the puzzle while Alex stared at the incoming pictures of Larissa. We were still twenty hours out. The moon isn’t much more than a large chunk of rock shaped like a potato, with a length of about two hundred kilometers. It orbits Neptune twice daily.

  After a while, I went over and sat down beside him. I looked at the images of a bleak moonscape coming in through the scopes. “Where do you think they would have put the station?”

  “The accounts don’t say, but I can’t believe they didn’t have it on the side facing the planet.”

  “Okay. That makes sense. Did the station have a name, Alex?”

  He had to look it up. “Landros. He was the commander of the first mission to get out this far.”

  There was a sudden flash directly in front of us. A rock, maybe, or even some dust, had drifted in and gotten eradicated by the laser.

  Alex cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been better to leave the artifacts to the looters rather than bury them out here. If that’s what they did. There’s something basically indecent about hiding things in a place like this.”

  “Especially,” I said, “if you forget about them and leave them here.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I mean.”

  * * *

  We turned the scopes on Larissa as we approached but saw nothing other than rock, broken ridges, promontories, and craters. Then it slipped behind Neptune.

  It needed only a few minutes to reappear. I sensed an air of desperation as Alex manipulated the images we’d been getting, shifting angles and adjusting magnification and seeing nothing but desolation. “We need to be closer to make anything out,” he said. “Just put us in orbit around the moon, and we should be able to find the station easily enough.”

  Neptune has five rings. Larissa, at a range of eighty-five thousand kilometers from the planet, lies outside the ring system.

  The gravity level on the moon is almost nonexistent. I’d have weighed about four pounds on the surface. When, finally, we got close, I folded a sheet, placed it over the puzzle (which was about half-finished), and taped it down. Then I eased us into orbit.

  Alex sat by a portal staring out as the moonscape moved slowly past.

  We spent the better part of a day in orbit and saw nothing but craters and rocks. “We have to get closer,” he said.

  “That means we’d have to burn a lot of fuel. It doesn’t have the gravity to support—”

  “Give me a suggestion.”

  “How about we leave Belle in orbit and use the lander.”

  * * *

  We climbed into the lander and launched. I took us down to an altitude of about six hundred meters. “This place looks so dreary,” I said. “It’s hard to believe anybody would have left something valuable out here.”

  “That’s precisely what makes this the perfect sanctuary,” said Alex. He was sitting up front with his jaw propped against one fist, staring out at the ground passing beneath us. We were moving faster than we had been in the ship. “Have faith.”

  “Somebody told me once that’s a good way to get into trouble.”

  We didn’t know what the base looked like. The only thing we could be relatively sure of was that it would have been constructed on an elevated area.

  Alex was beside me in the right-hand seat. We were both wearing goggles which, at least theoretically, made it easier to see in the azure glow of the giant planet. His lips were set in a thin line. “It has to be here somewhere,” I said.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  * * *

  Larissa was, of course, in tidal lock. The sun was too far away to be anything more than a bright star. The lighting, enhanced by a ring system that rose almost vertically into the sky, produced a terrain that seemed utterly unreal. We were constantly seeing shapes that did not exist, braking, going down, moving to starboard, doing whatever was necessary to change our angle. Each time, as our spotlights touched jewel-like azure objects, they went away, and we were left only with rocky escarpments and crags.

  After about two hours, Alex pointed. “There it is.” There was a note of triumph in his voice. We were looking down at what appeared to be a cluster of connected cubes and domes spread across varying levels of the moonscape.

  I took us lower. This time the object did not blink out.

  * * *

  There was a reasonably flat area within a few hundred meters. I took us in and touched down. We sat for a while, studying the structure. It was perched across the top of a pair of ridges. There was a telescope and scanners and radio antennas. Dark ports looked out at us. Eventually, we got up and climbed into pressure suits. We checked air supplies and radios, and when we were ready, Alex led the way out through the airlock. We walked carefully through the almost nonexistent gravity, resisting the temptation to do any jumping. We climbed to the top of the ridge, looked up at a wide, flattened dome. A walkway that took us directly to a hatch.

  There was a portal on either side. Both were dark. We pointed wrist lamps into them and saw furniture. Tables, chairs, sofas. “I think,” said Alex, “there might be some valuable stuff here.”

  A pad was located beside the hatch. He touched it. When nothing happened, he pressed harder. “Not working,” he said.

  We rounded the building and saw more structures of varying shapes. There was nothing elaborate, just modular parts that fit together like a large puzzle. They were all connected and stood at varying elevations on that uneven ground. A block-shaped building supported a group of scanners and dishes. It was at the highest point in the network and was linked to the dome by a bridge. In the distance, separated from everything else, we saw a collapsed telescope, the tube still attached to the mount but lying on a few rocks.

  The block-shaped building had another airlock. This one worked.

  I jumped when lights blinked on. And I heard Alex swallow. “Somebody’s done some maintenance,” I said.

  “Maybe.” The lights were all outside. A luminous line had also appeared, framing the hatch. And a single lamp hidden in the wall lit up the entry. The hatch rolled into the overhead, and more lights came on inside the airlock. Alex looked back at me. “Stay here,” he said. “Let’s make sure this thing works before we go any farther.”

  He went inside, touched something, and the hatch closed. “So far so good,” he said. “It’s running air into the chamber.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “You think this is really it?”

  He took a deep breath. “Let’s not get excited.” He was silent for a minute. Then: “Okay, it’s completed pressurization. We’re good.”

  * * *

  After we were sure the hatches worked, I joined him inside. The building was filled with chairs and tables. Some clothes had been left, and some basic equipment, and something that must have been a data-processing system. Which had no power. But the lights came on as we went room to room. It was a place where time had barely moved. Whoever had been there might have left only a week earlier. “They’ve got to be here someplace, Chase.” He was talking about the Centralia artifacts. “This place would have been perfect.”

  But we didn’t see anything. Eventually, we went back outside, surveyed the area, and found two storage buildings. Neither had power, so we used the lasers to cut our way in. They contained some large tanks, a lander that I would not have wanted to try traveling in, and some spare parts. “If this
was where they brought everything,” he said, “somebody cleaned it out.”

  “Maybe Baylee?”

  “No. Baylee would have had to cut his way in. Same as we did.”

  We checked the other buildings. All were, as we expected, empty. They were basically nothing more than living quarters. “I really thought we had a decent chance this time,” said Alex when it was over, and we stood outside in the soft blue light. Reluctantly, we turned away and climbed back into the lander.

  “Is there any other Larissa in the solar system?” I asked. “Maybe an abandoned orbiter or something?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to find.”

  “What about an asteroid? There are millions of them.”

  “I checked. They don’t use names. They have an alphanumeric system, which was introduced after the Dark Age. I couldn’t find a record of what preceded it.”

  After we got back to the Belle-Marie, Alex sat staring wearily, sometimes at the magnified images on the displays, sometimes out at the rocks. Finally, he shook his head. “Let’s go home,” he said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the end, there is no higher praise than that which comes from a dedicated detractor.

  —Casmir Kolchevsky, Why Archeology Matters, 1428

  The expected arrival of the Capella was more than five weeks away when we got back to Rimway. Alex dropped me off at my place, told me to take a few days’ vacation, and headed for the country house. I was relieved to get to my cottage without having to think about how much work had piled up at the office.

  It wasn’t the first time we’d failed on a serious outing. Alex usually accepted defeat without remorse. Hunting for artifacts, or sometimes just lost information, never came with a guarantee of success, so he never had a problem shrugging things off. It was part of the business. But this time was different. I wasn’t sure whether it was that the stakes were so high. Or that he felt he’d let Marissa Earl down. Or that he was convinced he’d missed something. Whatever was weighing on him, he’d grown increasingly quiet during the flight home.

  * * *

  In the morning, I went down to the gym and restarted my workout routine. Afterward, several of us met for lunch. Then I went back to my apartment, read for a bit, watched some HV, and was drifting off to sleep when a call came in from Brockton Moore, the host of Morning Roundtable. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Chase,” he said.

  It was unusual for any of the media people to call me at home. “Not at all, Brockton,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, we know that you and Alex just came back from Earth. And that it had something to do with Garnett Baylee. I was wondering if you’d care to share with me what it was about?”

  Moore, I decided, thought I would be more likely to talk with him than Alex would. “We were just on vacation. Who’s Garnett Baylee?”

  “Well, his granddaughter’s one of your clients.”

  “Oh. That Garnett Baylee.”

  “Very funny, Chase. Seriously, though, what’s going on? Can I persuade you to come on the show to talk about it?”

  “I’m not sure why you’re calling me. Alex is the person you should talk to.”

  “Alex isn’t taking calls, Chase. Anyhow, you look a lot better than he does. We’ll get more viewers.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Brockton. If you like, I’ll tell him he has an invitation from you.”

  “Is that really the best you can do?”

  “I’m sorry. A client’s business is confidential.”

  “Then it is connected with Marissa Earl?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Sure you did. Listen, Chase, we’d love to have you on the show.”

  “All right. You want the truth?”

  “Sure.”

  “We were looking into something. Nothing came of it, so there’s no story. There’s just nothing there that would interest your viewers.”

  “Why don’t you come in and tell them that yourself? Tell them what the story was that didn’t pan out?”

  “Because it would be boring. I hate being boring.”

  * * *

  In the morning, I decided I’d had enough sitting around and headed for the country house. I walked in the front door and Jacob said hello and told me that Shara had just tried to reach me. I was still in the act of sitting down when my link sounded. It was Shara. “Glad you’re back, Chase,” she said. “How was the trip?”

  “We did a lot of sightseeing. What’s happening with the Capella?”

  “We might have a breakthrough. Orion is making the Grainger available for testing.”

  “How’d that happen?” I asked.

  “What we’re hearing is that President Davis leaned on them. They’re claiming he had nothing to do with the decision, that it’s being done purely in the public interest. If that’s the case, it took them a long time.”

  “So you’re going to use it in a test?”

  “Yes. We’re going out again. You and Alex want to come along?”

  “This one’s not secret?”

  “No way Orion would overlook publicizing its commitment to the public welfare.”

  “When are you going?”

  “End of the week.”

  “Hold on.” Music was coming from the conference room. I stuck my head in and saw Alex seated in front of one of the displays. “Got a minute?” I said.

  “Hi, Chase. What are you doing here?”

  “Just thought I’d drop by. Listen, SRF has the Grainger. They’ll be making another effort in a couple of days. You want to go?”

  “I’d like to, but I have all kinds of commitments, and I don’t see how I could do anything except get in the way. You want to handle it?”

  “All right.”

  “Good. By the way, Southwick will be here in an hour or so.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “Don’t know. He called and asked if he could come by.”

  * * *

  He arrived in an aircab, directed it to wait, and strode up the walkway to the front door as if he owned the place. Jacob opened up for him, and I escorted him in. “Good to see you, Chase,” he said with an amenable smile. “I have an appointment with Alex.”

  “He’s in back.” I showed him. “Straight ahead on your right.”

  Southwick entered the conference room. I turned away and started back to my office, but Alex called for me to join them. “You’ve been part of this from the start, Chase. If Mr. Southwick doesn’t mind, I’d like to have you sit in.”

  Southwick nodded. “Lawrence, please. And absolutely. Glad to have Chase stay. I hope I didn’t mislead you guys. I don’t really have any information to add. I was just hoping you’d met with some success. That you’d picked up some sense of where Garnie got that transmitter.”

  “I wish, Lawrence,” said Alex. “But no, we didn’t really find anything. At one point I thought we were in business. But we got nothing.” He shrugged. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.” He looked disappointed. “So do you think it’s worth pursuing any farther?”

  Alex shifted around in his chair. Looked down at the table. “We just don’t know.”

  “You said that you thought you’d come across something?”

  “Does Larissa mean anything to you?”

  “You mean Marissa Earl?”

  “No. Larissa with an ‘L.’ This would be a place. I think.”

  He stiffened. “I have no idea. Never heard of it.”

  “It looks as if Baylee got interested in some historical notes that claimed the Apollo artifacts had been taken from the Prairie House to a place called Larissa. It was a Greek city close to where Dmitri Zorbas was born. You know who Zorbas was?”

  “Yes. More or less. He was the director at the Prairie House.”
>
  “Right. We went to Europe and looked, but there’s no indication that Baylee ever showed up in the area. So I think we can write that off.”

  “That’s a pity. I’m sorry it didn’t lead anywhere.” He looked out at the trees. Something was chirping. “You have a beautiful view, Alex.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay. I won’t take any more of your time. I know you went to a lot of trouble to try to chase this down. I just wanted to say thanks. I appreciate it. And I know Garnett’s family does, too.” He got up. “Time to let it go, I guess. If there’s anything I can do, anything at all, let me know.”

  I walked back to the front door with him. “You know, Chase,” he said, “I wish I’d known about that communication device, the transmitter, when he was alive. There’s probably a simple explanation that would have settled all this pretty easily.”

  * * *

  A few minutes after he’d left, Alex came into my office. “Do you have any details about the Grainger test? What are they planning on doing?”

  “I can check with Shara.”

  “No, that’s okay. We don’t want to be giving them stuff to do. By the way, something I meant to tell you earlier and forgot. I was doing some research. We might have had a closer call than we realized.”

  “What do you mean? Did we get dumped in the ocean during shark season?”

  “I’m not talking about the attack on the boat.”

  “What then?”

  “The research base on Larissa. You remember one of the buildings still had power?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some of the power sources they used in ancient times could become seriously dangerous if they didn’t get shut down. They were effectively self-sustaining, and they could continue to function pretty much indefinitely.”

  “That’s hard to believe, Alex. They’d continue to function over thousands of years? I’m more inclined to think somebody’s been doing some maintenance.”

  “We have energy sources now that have the same capability. But there’s a difference. Modern ones have, or are supposed to have, a safety feature. After a while, they disconnect on their own. The older ones were supposed to have that, too. But according to what I’ve read, it didn’t always work. And when it didn’t, they tended to become unstable. They were especially dangerous if, after a long period of just sitting there, somebody activated them.”