Steven McDonald - Steven E. McDonald

Hollis heaved a tremendous sigh, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, then opening them to stare at Weir. “That ship was lost in deep space, seven years ago. If the Titanic sailed into New York Harbor I’d find it more plausible.”

Hollis paused, waiting to see if Weir had anything to say. The scientist settled for running his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it into place. “Houston wants Aerospace to send out a search and rescue team, investigate the source of the transmission. If it really is the Event Horizon, they’ll attempt a salvage.”

There was another pause then. Weir turned to look at Lyle, who was watching him intently, then at Hollis. What were they expecting him to say, these military people? This was some kind of foolish game they needed to play, run by arcane rules. As far as he was concerned, Hollis and Lyle could run through their piece, and then they could parlay and get to where they really needed to be.

“We need you to prepare a detailed briefing on the ship’s systems for the salvage crew,” Hollis said. There it was: write a report and go away.

That was not the way it was supposed to work.

Weir turned fully away from the video wall, approaching Hollis’ desk. The Admiral sat up straighter, giving Weir a hard look. People could, Weir mused, mistake the Admiral’s bulk for flab, not realizing that there was a hard man under that uniform. Hollis was a damn good man, but there were no needless soft edges.

“With respect,” Weir said softly, meeting Hollis’ eyes, “a written briefing can’t possibly anticipate the variables on a mission like this. I have to go with them.”

Lyle took a step towards Weir, who turned his head, wary of the young woman. Lyle had a shocked expression, the sort of look that comes when realizing that another person in the room is a dangerous psychotic rather than a simple milquetoast.

“Dr. Weir,” Lyle said, her voice harsh, “you have no experience with salvage procedures.”

“But I know the ship,” Weir said, willing the woman to back down now. “You can’t send a search-and-rescue team out there alone and expect them to succeed. That would be like…” He hesitated, struggling for a simile, running with the first thing that presented itself. He had always been miserable on college debating teams. “Like sending an auto mechanic to work on the shuttle.”

Lyle was face to face with him now, determined to make Weir back down and forget this lunatic idea he had that he would hare off into deep space. “I don’t see how sending you would improve their chances.”

Weir had no intention of giving ground. His ship was back. His ship. Lyle could not understand that. “I designed that ship.” He took a deep breath, staring at Lyle, then at Hollis, then back at Lyle. “I put fourteen years of research into this project. I spent the last seven exploring every possible scenario, trying to discover what went wrong.”

Lyle’s eyes narrowed. The adjutant seemed convinced that she had victory close at hand. “Your desire to redeem your reputation doesn’t factor into this.”

Weir had been shoving anger into little corners of his soul for so long that he had been convinced that he could not lose his temper any more. Now, fury starting to burn white-hot inside him, he realized that he had made an incorrect assumption: his anger was only waiting for the right reason.

“This is not about my reputation!” he snapped at Lyle, and for good measure he glared at Hollis. “This is not about me at all!”

He turned back to Lyle, balling his fists, planting his feet. Let them think him belligerent, even dangerous. They had to understand. There was too much at stake for everyone.

“The Event Horizon,” he went on, measuring his words, speaking as though talking to idiots, “was created for one reason: to go faster than light.

Without it, we will never reach new stars, we will never colonize new planets.

Mankind’s evolution will end here.” He looked from Lyle to Hollis. Both were watching him, either rapt or guarded or both. “I have to go.”

Hollis sighed and sat back, shaking his head. “It’s not that simple.” He held up a hand as Weir glared angrily at him and started to speak. “Lyle, play the recording for Dr. Weir.”

Lyle came back to Hollis’ desk, reached down to one of the scattered pieces of equipment. She had the look of a woman with a mission. Weir feared that the mission might well be to make certain that the salvage team traveled unencumbered.

“Navigation Control tried to hail the vessel,” Lyle said. She stabbed at a button and looked up at Weir, nodding toward a chair. Weir sat down. “This was the only response.”

Waves of sound poured from the office speakers. At first Weir mistook it for amplified white noise, but then he became aware of other things pushing out from the torrent of static: noises that caused him to recoil in his chair, sounds so primal that he had to struggle not to react instinctively.

Screeching, chattering voices, barely heard, that chilled him to the bone and sent the hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickling up. He found himself gripping the sides of the chair, his hands locked.

The terrible mixture of sounds suddenly broke, plunging back to nothing more than static. Weir sank back into his chair, limp, shaken by the sounds he had heard. Something in those voices had somehow reached into him, touching the cold parts of his soul.

He shivered, remembering, seeing himself floating, eyeless, on the bridge of the Event Horizon.

Lyle shut off the recording. The office was almost silent, only the background noises of Daylight Station being heard. The quiet lasted for a while, none of them daring to speak immediately.

Hollis watched the door close behind Weir. Then the strength went out of him for a moment, and he slumped in his padded chair. Allowing Weir to go on the mission had not been his preference, considering the shape Weir was in and how he felt about the loss of the Event Horizon in the first place.

That’s the trouble with women, Hollis thought sourly, glancing down at the pale patch on his left ring finger, men will go right up to the gates of Hell for them, no questions asked. Twenty-two years getting one finger indented. A couple of years did little to erase the mark. He felt for Weir. Marks upon the soul could never be erased.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lyle sliding forward out of the shadows. Out of the adjutants he had had, Lyle was the smoothest, a slick character who had the marbles of a press agent and the chutzpah of a berserker. It was a rare treat to see her unnerved.

Softly, Lyle said, “You’re not seriously considering sending him?”

Hollis turned his chair so that he could look directly into his aide’s eyes, a tactic that made the woman flinch. It was a good idea to keep the Young Turks on their toes. “You don’t just dismiss Bill Weir,” he said, his gruff tone meant to indicate that the listener should expect a miniature lecture. Here beginneth the lesson, O Daughter. “The man held Oppenheimer’s chair at Princeton.”

Hollis paused briefly, wondering whether he should ask if Lyle even knew who J. Robert Oppenheimer was, if she knew the correspondences to Weir’s life.

What the hell, it sounds impressive enough.

“If the Event Horizon had worked,” Hollis went on, while Lyle stood patiently, her head cocked to one side like a faithful dog, “he would have gone down in history as the greatest mind in physics since Einstein. And we have him here, categorizing stellar objects.”

Listening faithfully or not, Lyle was not to be deterred from her course of objections. “The official inquiry blamed Weir’s design for the ship’s loss.”