Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

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.”

“You mean like by opening an airlock?”

“Yes. Then there was a fair chance they’d blow the place apart. A few people have been killed.”

“Maybe it would be a good idea to disable them.”

“Most are disabled. But stations get put all over the Belt. Our client Linda Talbott and her husband live on an asteroid. Who knows where all these places are? Anyway, if we do something like that again, we should be careful. Not do anything that might turn on the power.”

“Alex, that wasn’t the first time we’ve done that .”

“I know. That’s why I’m mentioning it.”

I rode up on the shuttle with Shara. “Are Nick and JoAnn,” I asked her, “already on Skydeck?”

“They left three days ago,” she said.

“ Three days ago? Aren’t they riding with us?”

“They’re both on the Grainger , Chase.”

“Okay. They’re not still going to be on board when it makes its jump, are they?”

She gave me a clenched-teeth nod. “Yes.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why don’t they let the AI handle everything?”

“JoAnn says she has to be there so she can get a feel for what’s happening and react on the spot. Which means she needs a pilot with some passenger-ship experience. That’s Nick.”

“They’re taking their chances.”

“That’s why we’re going along. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll take them off the Grainger and bring them home.”

“It’s not a good idea,” I said again.

“JoAnn thinks there’s no other way to do it. And we’re running out of time. We need to know whether she can fix the problem. And demonstrate it to everybody’s satisfaction.”

“How confident is she?”

“She says they’ll be okay.”

“I hope.”

“She’s the best we’ve got. If she can’t shut down the cycle, it’s not going to happen.”

It wasn’t exactly a topic that was going to make for light conversation, but all efforts to change the subject failed. We went over it and over it, and the mood got darker. “Does Nick know what he’s gotten himself into?” I asked finally.

“You think he wasn’t paying attention during the first test?” We were leaving the atmosphere by then. Below us, there was nothing but clouds and ocean.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Shara.”

“We don’t really have much of a choice.”

Our voices had been getting loud, and we were drawing stares from a woman across the aisle. I said something about how I was sure everything would be fine. We were both quiet for a minute or two. But there was no avoiding the issue. “How’s JoAnn been?” I asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Nick thought this whole process was getting to her.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about her ,” Shara said. “She’s committed. There’s no question about that. And she’s pretty tough.”

“Who’s our pilot going to be?”

“We can get one at Skydeck. But I thought you might want to volunteer—”

We arrived on the platform with some time to spare, so we stopped for lunch at Karl’s Dellacondan, where the atmosphere lightened a bit. Maybe it was the string music, maybe it was that the place was filled with tourists talking about the view. Whatever had happened, we relaxed and tried to pretend everything was under control. The sandwiches were good, the manager stopped by our table to ask whether we were satisfied with the service, and a young man in a station uniform who had been one of Shara’s students appeared and told her what a great teacher she’d been, and that he was confident her presence on the Capella team would guarantee a happy result. “If,” he added, “anything would.”