Diane Duane - Starrise at Corrivale

Gabriel thought that he might have a point there. At the same time, his attention was now attracted somewhat by the wreckage beginning to float around them. He reached into the tank and tweaked a control, bringing up a routine he had programmed in earlier.

"You using beams out there, brother?"

"Scanning," said Gabriel.

"Looking for something in particular?"

"Bodies," Gabriel said.

"Should be plenty of those," said Helm. "Sesheyan mostly, far as I can tell. Company types. This a personal kink, or is there a reason?" "I don't want to get into it right now." "Oh," said the friendly voice, "a kink."

Enda was chuckling. "Not the one you think, perhaps," she said.

"Well, that's all right then," Helm said. "Those bodies you looking for usually carry ID beacons?" "What?" Gabriel asked.

"Something out there's got a beacon on it. Squawk four-four-five-oh. Take a listen."

Gabriel spoke to Sunshine's comm settings. A moment later they heard the soft repetitive cheeping of the beacon.

"Black box?" Gabriel said.

"On these ships?" said Helm. "Not likely."

"Someone signaling for help?" Enda asked.

Gabriel shook his head. "It could be, but it's hard to tell."

"Signal's attenuating," Helm said. "Not meant to play for long, I think."

"Hurry up, we've got to find it!"

The signal ceased.

"I don't believe it," Gabriel said.

"Look," Enda said. "No, not there. Gabriel, look. There is a light."

He peered out the cockpit windows, then doused the interior lights to help him see. "I see it," he said. "Enda, what eyes you have!"

"There is definitely something attached," she said as Gabriel directed the tactical scanners' attention to that one spot. "A small container, perhaps?"

"Not that small," said Helm. "Looks about two meters by three?"

"Nice call," Gabriel said, for that was almost exactly its size, as the tactical display confirmed. "Some kind of escape capsule?"

"No sign of such," said Helm. "No heat sources at the right frequency, anyway."

"How much stuff have you got installed in that ship?" Gabriel said in naked envy. "The weaponry is bad enough. But infrared scanners are-"

"Not cheap, but I have a friend in the business." Helm chuckled. "Delde Sota got me a discount." Gabriel moaned softly. "Please. Her and her discounts."

"Oh, it didn't come that cheap. She made me install some of her hardware in here as a swap. She likes to watch, does Delde Sota." " 'Watch'?"

"Not that, but just about everything else. You couldn't build a nose big enough to match her nosiness. Sensors, an extension of her little braid, you name it. Comes in handy sometimes, but she charges me to use it, the cheap little metal-head," Helm snickered.

Gabriel had to chuckle at that. "Now then," he said as Sunshine came up to the object that had the beacon attached. It was a dark egglike ovoid of black metal. Its strobe was still flashing, but the flashes were getting further apart.

"Another five minutes and we wouldn't have found it," Helm said as his ship nosed up to the object too.

Gabriel looked at the name, Longshot, fused neatly on near the nose. He then looked down the length of the ship in Sunshine's spotlights. The thing was fairly bristling with weapons that it would take him and Enda years to afford. Gabriel became very glad that Helm had come in on their side and not against them. It would have been a wry short fight.

"Now what do you make of this?" Helm was saying.

"It might be a bomb," Gabriel answered.

"It might be nearly anything," said Enda, "but why put a homing device on a bomb? Unless it is so rare a one that you want it back if it does not explode. But what kind of bomb wouldn't explode?" "That logic suggests by itself that it's not a bomb," said Helm. "Do you want to take it on board, or should I?"

Gabriel looked at it, and the words "bomb" and "on board" jarred together uncomfortably in his head.

Still, it had been through an explosion already and hadn't exploded.

"We've got X-ray gear in the hold," Gabriel said, "for mining work, usually."

Helm chuckled. "Hunting the Glory Rock, huh? Will this thing fit in?"

"It should."

Gabriel spent about ten minutes with the remote manipulators, fitting the black egg into the cargo bay against the X-ray apparatus. The metal of the egg's casing was magnetizable, but Gabriel was reluctant to use the electromagnet grapples on the egg in case something inside that casing should react unkindly to a strong magnetic field.

He activated the X-ray projector and aimed it at the egg. where it sat in front of the imaging screen. He then transferred the image to the tank. "Can you see this?" Gabriel asked Helm. "Yeah, getting it through comms."

The now-translucent image of the egg appeared in the tank. "Well, at least it is not opaque," Enda said, leaning in and looking at it curiously. "But what is that in there?"

It was hard to tell. There were two fairly large compartments, each packed full of some solid substance with what appeared to be minor cavities in it, then a smaller cavity full of a liquid. Down at the "small" end of the egg was a smaller cavity still that seemed empty but might just as well have had something gaseous in it. Finally, there appeared a small black object with circuitry spun through it-a data solid of some kind.

"If it is a bomb," said Helm, "I've never seen or heard of anything like it."

Enda was shaking her head. She reached into the tank and brought up the controls for one of the secondary sensor arrays in the cargo hold. "Only residual radioactivity," she said. "There is nothing fissionable in there."

"Do you want to open it?" Helm asked.

"Not a chance," Gabriel said forcefully. "Leave it right where it is."

They all looked at it for a few moments more, and then Enda leaned back and sighed. "Helm," she said, "you have our great thanks. Did Delde Sola suggest to you where we were intending to go?"

"She said you might be heading out into the system," Helm said, sitting back in his own pilot's seat with his arms folded. "She didn't go into detail, but she suggested that you might need someone to watch your backs."

"I confess I would be glad of that," Enda said. "If you require reimbursement for your time-" For some reason, Helm looked genuinely alarmed. "Oh, no, no," he said. "This is payback for a favor Delde Sota did me once upon a time. She does these things for people, with the understanding that she'll call the favor in eventually. My dance card's empty for the next couple of weeks. You just tell me what you need."

"Well," Gabriel said, "we're heading to Rhynchus."

Helm looked bemused. "Rhynchus? There's nothing on Rhynchus."

'That's what we hear," Gabriel said. "Let's have our computers cut a course and head on over there." Helm shook his head, mystified, and bent to his own console to comply. "Strangers well met," they heard him mutter, "with the emphasis on strange." Gabriel grinned a little and started working in the tank.

Three hours later, without sighting or hearing from any other craft, they were in orbit over Rhynchus. Moving in silent tandem, using visuals and sensors, Sunshine and Longshot looked down upon the forlorn world.

The planet was mostly barren-looking. It had little surface water-a few lakes-and any water that appeared within thirty degrees of the poles was well frozen. At the equator, matters were slightly better.

Here and there were some small patches of some stubborn native vegetation, even a small forest or two, but they were few. Mostly the surface was rocky and uninviting, and the color of the exposed parts of the crust was not such as to suggest much in the way of mineral or metallic wealth.

There was no sign of anything else, nothing built, no city, no habitation. The two ships were in ball-of-yarn orbit, the processing orbit that covers a planet's whole surface in a matter of a few hours. They had done one whole pattern for mapping purposes, and the computer was working with the maps. But by eye, there was nothing at all visible, and it was getting frustrating.