Elaine Doi glanced from Nigel to Wilson. “I’m satisfied that you’re in charge of the mission, Captain.”
“If we had more than one ship, communications wouldn’t be such an issue,” Oscar said.
“And who’s going to pay for another ship?” Thompson asked quickly. His gaze flicked to one of the big portals set up along the far side of the courtyard garden. They all showed various images of the Second Chance. The starship was docked to its assembly platform, though the outer shell of malmetal had peeled back to a thick toroid skirt around the gateway. Of all the construction gridwork, only a tripod of gantry arms remained, like an aluminum claw gripping the rear of the starship. Sunlight fell across the four-hundred-meter length of the central cylindrical section’s snow-white hull, casting small gray shadows from every hatch, nozzle, grid, antenna, and handrail that stood above the protective cloak of foam. The huge life-support ring was rotating slowly around it, almost devoid of windows, except for a few black rectangles along the front edge. Tiny colored navigation lights winked at various points on the superstructure, otherwise there was no visible activity.
The sight of the massive vessel brought a flush of comfort to Wilson. Something that large, that solid, gave an overwhelming impression of dependability.
“Any subsequent ships would be cheaper now we’ve finalized the design,” Nigel said. “CST is certainly considering the formation of a small exploration fleet.”
“What the hell for?” Thompson said. “This expedition is bad enough, and we know something strange is out there. We don’t need to go looking for trouble any farther out.”
“That’s hardly the attitude that pushed us this far out into the galaxy, Senator. We’re not a poor society, thanks to that outward urge; we should continue to push back the barriers.”
“Fine,” Thompson said bluntly. “You want them pushed back, you pay for them. You certainly won’t have my support for further government funding. Look what happened with Far Away—we poured billions into that venture, and it still costs the government hundreds of millions a year. What have we ever got back out of it?”
“Knowledge,” Wilson said, surprised to find himself defending Far Away.
“Precious little of it,” Thompson grunted.
“Tell that to the Halgarths, they dominate force field manufacture thanks to the technology they acquired from the Marie Celeste.”
“What if we don’t come back?” Anna asked. The way the Council members all looked at her in a mildly scandalized silence made her want to giggle. “You have to admit, it’s a possibility.”
“We won’t abandon you,” Elaine Doi said smoothly. “If it is necessary to build another ship, then it will be done.” She gave the North American Senator a sharp frown as he gathered himself to speak.
“The ExoProtectorate Council has drawn up contingency plans for every possible scenario,” Nigel Sheldon said. “And quite a few implausible ones as well. As the Vice President says, every effort will be made should we face a worst-case outcome.”
“Does that include military action?”
Now even Wilson was giving her a look.
“I don’t believe that’s relevant,” Rafael Columbia said.
“It just strikes me as odd that very little is being done to beef up the Commonwealth’s defenses. Especially as one of the most plausible theories about the Dyson barrier is that it’s protective.”
“We are doing something about it,” Rafael Columbia said. “We’re sending you to assess the situation.”
“And if it’s bad?”
“We will respond accordingly.”
“With what? We haven’t had any wars for three hundred years.”
“There are seventeen Isolated planets, and each one was withdrawn from the Commonwealth because of military action. The last of those was only twenty years ago. Sad to say, our Commonwealth is actually quite experienced in such matters.”
“Those were guerrilla actions mounted by nationalist and religious groups. Most of the Commonwealth’s citizens weren’t even aware of them.”
“What exactly is your point?” Elaine Doi asked, irritation creeping into her voice.
“All I’m saying is, a few Alamo Avengers aren’t going to be much use against anything that’s seriously hostile out there.”
“We know that. Your mission profile was drawn up with the possibility in mind, and I welcomed Captain Kime’s input in the planning. Frankly, his cautious approach is one I favor. And to be realistic, if you do find anything as powerful and hostile as what you’re talking about, then they’re going to know about the Commonwealth anyway.”
The band struck up a light waltz that Wilson felt he should know. But he was thankful for the distraction as everyone turned to look at the western sky. A particularly bright star was rising above the palace rooftop.
They’d left the Second Chance in her highly elliptical orbit around Anshun; after all, the exact position made no difference to the wormhole gateway. Now as she glided up high over the horizon, still exposed to the full radiance of Anshun’s sun, she was the brightest object in the heavens. Fireworks zoomed over the palace to greet the starship, exploding in huge bursts of emerald, gold, and carmine with a cacophony of thunder cracks. The courtyard was swiftly filled with the rapturous applause of the elite guests. A laser projector drenched Wilson in a bubble of white light. Everyone turned to look at him, the sound of their applause rising. He bowed graciously, gesturing Anna and Oscar into the lightfield as the senior members of the ExoProtectorate Council sank away along with Tu Lee. Somehow Dudley Bose managed to appear beside Oscar, clasping his hands victoriously above his head.
When the fireworks were over the band resumed a more traditional background piece. The buffet was opened and people surged across the garden. Elaine Doi stepped forward again. “Captain, I just wanted to say bon voyage.”
Even when it was over, Wilson regretted having to attend the official party for the personal time it stole from him on the eve of the departure. By the time the buffet started the affair had become immensely boring. Two hours in, he’d seen Oscar making a quiet exit with some handsome young lad, and wished he could do the same with Anna. But they’d be noticed; he’d forgotten the true price of fame.
There were compensations, however. At eight o’clock this morning he had arrived at the complex to walk through the gateway. Management staff, construction crew and technicians, designers, medical personnel, and a hundred others lined the last length of path before the wormhole, all applauding as Wilson led the senior officers through the gateway. Now he was sitting in the bridge, about to embark on the voyage that would put him on the same list as Columbus, Armstrong, Sheldon and Isaac. But not poor old Dylan Lewis.
To be honest, he did consider the bridge to be a bit disappointing. Even the old Ulysses command cabin had been more visually exciting, let alone the bustling chambers of a thousand unisphere fantasy drama ships. It was a simple compartment with consoles for ten people, although only seven were currently manned. A glass wall separated off the senior officer’s briefing room—basically, a big conference table with twenty chairs. At least there were a couple of large high-rez holographic portals in their traditional place on the forward wall, although (bad design, this) the consoles right in front of them blocked the lower portion from anyone farther back.
Not that he had much time for the standard images they were relaying from hull-mounted cameras. His virtual vision was on high intensity while his retinal inserts were filtering out most natural light. The result was an almost indistinct room flooded with ship-function icons. He rested his palms on the console i-spots, seeing phantom fingers materialize within the galaxy of graphics drifting through the air around him. When he tapped his customized chrome-yellow fingernail on the airlock icon, it expanded to show him the hull was now sealed. A simultaneous tap on the umbilicals told him all the tanks were full and on internal power. The only links to the platform were a high-band data cable and the mechanical latches.
“Crew status?” he asked Oscar.
“Everyone on board and ready.”
“Okay then; Pilot, please activate our force field and disengage us from the platform.”
“Aye, sir,” Jean Douvoir said. The pilot had spent decades working for several companies at the High Angel, flying engineering pods around the big freefall factories, shifting sections massing hundreds of tons with the casual precision of a bird of prey. Before that, he’d helped develop control routines for spaceplane RI pilots. Coupled with his enthusiasm for the project, it was a background that made him perfect for the job. Wilson counted himself lucky to have someone so competent on board.
A communications icon flashed in Wilson’s virtual vision, tagging the call as Nigel Sheldon. He tapped for admission.
“Captain,” Sheldon’s voice sounded across the bridge, “I’m accessing your telemetry. It all looks good from where we are.”
“And here.” There had been a great many of these pointless official talks on the Ulysses, too. All for posterity and media profile. One of his virtual vision digital readouts was showing the number of people accessing the moment through the unisphere: in excess of fifteen billion. “We’re ready to go.” His voice was somber and authoritative as the impact of the event finally hit home. One of the portals showed him a view of the three umbilical gantries swinging away from the starship’s rear section. Little silver-white fluid globules spilled out of the closed valves, sparkling in the sunlight as they wobbled off into space.
“Hopefully, we’ll see you again in a year’s time,” Nigel Sheldon said.
“I look forward to it.”
“Godspeed, Captain.”
Jean Douvoir fired the small thrusters around the rear of the central cylindrical section. Second Chance started to slide away from the gateway. Acceleration was so tiny Wilson couldn’t even feel it affect the low-gravity bridge. The dazzling turquoise flames of the thrusters shrank away and vanished.
“We’re now at five meters per second,” Douvoir reported. There was a lot of amusement in his voice.
“Thank you, Pilot,” Wilson said. “Hyperdrive, please bring the wormhole up to flight level.”
“Aye, sir.” Tu Lee couldn’t help the strong twang of excitement in her voice. She began to shunt instructions into the ship’s RI that would handle the enormously complex energy manipulation functions.
Nigel instructed his e-butler to shift down his virtual vision intensity, and took his hands off the console i-spots. One hologram portal showed the assembly platform slowly shrinking behind them. The second had a small circular turquoise nebular glowing in the center. It began to expand, growing more indistinct, although no stars were visible through it.
“Course laid in?” Wilson asked.
“Want to consult our expert navigator on that?” Anna muttered under her breath. She still hadn’t warmed up to Bose.
Wilson ignored her, wondering if the rest of the bridge crew had overheard.
“As agreed,” Oscar said. He had his hands pressed firmly on his console i-spot, his eyes flicking quickly between virtual icons. “First exit point, twenty-five light-years from Dyson Alpha.”
“Wormhole opening stable, Captain,” Tu Lee reported.
“Inject us,” Wilson told her.
The blue haze folded around Second Chance like petals closing for the night. Their datalink to the assembly platform and the unisphere ended. Both portals showed the starship bathing in the wormhole’s pale moonlight radiance of low-level radiation.
Oscar canceled the camera feeds. The bridge portals switched to displaying the gravitonic spectrum, sensors around the ship detecting faint echoes resonating within the wormhole. It was a crude version of radar that allowed them to locate stars and planets to a reasonable degree, but that was all. For truly accurate sensor work they needed to drop out into real space.
Wilson upped his virtual vision again, taking another sweep of the starship’s primary systems. Everything was humming along sweetly. He came out and checked around the bridge. The engineers were all still heavily integrated with the ship’s RI, monitoring the performance of their respective fields, but everyone else was already relaxing. Wilson glanced inquisitively at Oscar, who put on a contented expression as he sat back. There wasn’t much left for them to do. Not for another hundred thirty days.
THIRTEEN
Hoshe waited at the side of the street for her to arrive. It wasn’t midmorning yet, but already a small crowd of curious locals had gathered along the sidewalk. Two police cruisers had parked nearby, their constables directing the copbots as they set up temporary barriers around the thirty-story condo building. As he watched, yet another big police technical support van pulled up and slowly nosed its way down into the underground garage. His e-butler told him the precinct commander was on his way, and the city commissioner had asked for the Ice Department case files.
“Great,” Hoshe muttered. It was going to turn into one big jurisdictional free-for-all, he was sure of that. Now all the real work had been done, every other department in Darklake would be after a slice of the credit.
An unmarked police car drew up beside him. Paula stepped out. She was wearing a simple pale blue dress with a fawn jacket, her raven hair tied back neatly. Hoshe thought her skin was a shade darker than the last time he’d seen her, but then Treloar, Anshun’s capital, was in the tropics. She actually gave him a smile as he said hello.
“Good to see you again,” he said.
“And you, Hoshe. Sorry I left you carrying the ball on this one.”
“That’s okay,” he lied.
“But I appreciate the way you carried on, and for calling me today. That’s very professional.”
He gestured her toward the entrance to the garage. “You might yet regret coming, a lot of senior city police officers are on their way.”
“That I’m used to. You know, right now I’d actually welcome some of the old problems again.”
“Tough case?”
“You wouldn’t think so by the number of arrests we’ve made.” She shrugged. “But yes. My opponent is an elusive man.”
“Holmes and Moriarty, yes?”
“Hoshe, I had no idea you read the classics.”
“It was some time ago, but I used to really enjoy that kind of thing.”
“Holmes never knew how easy he had it,” she said as they reached the bottom of the ramp. “So what have you got for me?”
Two white forensics department vans were parked at the far end of the garage. Various sensor patches the size of paving slabs had been stuck to the floor around the walls and thick cables snaked around everywhere, winding back to the open access panels on both vans. Several GeneralPurposebots were moving the sensors around, clustering them in one corner while three forensics officers supervised.
“We found them first thing this morning,” Hoshe said as they climbed into the back of the squad leader’s van. The inside was cramped, a narrow corridor between two equipment benches, the air hot from all the humming electrical circuits. He was more than familiar with all the units. The additional forensics teams Myo had promised from the Serious Crime Directorate had never materialized. In view of what amounted to her withdrawal from the case, Hoshe’s commander had reluctantly agreed to allocate him two of the city’s forensics squads. Hoshe himself had undergone the appropriate skill memory implementation so he could operate the equipment and interpret the results, helping his pitifully small team throughout all the dreary months that had followed. They had worked through the list of sites where construction work had been going on forty years ago, a laborious and terribly tedious task. Sick days and short hours among the team members had been on a steady upward curve from the first week onward. There had been times, especially in the last few weeks, when only the GPbots had turned up at the start of the day’s shift.
Hoshe had been receiving an increasing amount of pressure from both the team and his commander to wrap things up. But he’d kept doggedly to the
list, examining the sites one after the other while soothing and cajoling the team and pleading for just a little more time from the police department. Reflective deep scanning had revealed a great many interesting things buried beneath the city, but no bodies. Until this morning.
Paula peered closely at the small high-rez holographic portal with its 3D grid of gentle pink luminescence; right at the center were swirls of darker red, like knots in wood.
“Even allowing for decomposition you can see the shapes quite clearly,” Hoshe said, his finger tracing around denser swirls. “This is a head here, look, and these are arms and legs. Both bodies are inside some kind of box-shape container; there’s a distinct air cavity around each of them.”
“I’ll take your word for it. This looks like a Rorschach test to me.”
Hoshe avoided a smile. “One is slightly smaller than the other; which corresponds to a male/female pairing. But that’s the end of the good news. They’re deep; ten meters down below this level. The developer didn’t cut corners when this condo was built, unfortunately; all the foundations correspond to City Hall regulations.”
“Thank you, Hoshe.”
“We don’t know it’s them yet. We’ll get a slightly better resolution when the sensors have been realigned, but that’s not going to give us a positive ID. Only DNA will do that.”
“It’s them. You know it is.”
“Yeah, well. It’s going to be a bitch to get them out. We’ll have to excavate all the way around, probably need force fields to reinforce the foundation when we chop the block out. The residents will need to be moved out while we do that. Then we’ll need to break the concrete up very carefully.”
“Don’t worry, the Directorate has experienced extraction teams. I’ll have them here before lunch.”
“You said that about the forensics teams.”
She shifted around in the cramped space, and gave him an unnerving look of appraisal. “I know, and I apologize again. I’ve never quite let anybody down like that before. It won’t happen again.”
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