Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

Our coffee arrived. JoAnn picked up her cup, looked out at the snow, which had eased off a bit, and put it back down without tasting it. “It might be possible,” she said, “to manipulate the drive unit and shut down the cycle.”

“You mean to keep the ship from going under again?”

“Yes. We might be able to stop the process dead in its tracks.”

“How optimistic are you?”

“We have a pretty decent chance, actually. Somewhere around a ninety percent probability.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s great news.”

JoAnn nodded, but didn’t look happy. “There’s a downside.”

“Oh.”

“There’s also a possibility we could send the ship out somewhere where we’d lose it again.” Her eyes blazed. “Or we might destabilize everything and destroy it altogether. That’s why we haven’t been making a lot of noise about it.”

“Is there any way you can eliminate that possibility? I mean, can you run an experiment or something?”

This time she did taste the coffee. “Unfortunately, there’s a level of uncertainty about all this that we may never get rid of. Not completely. I don’t know. The ranking genius on all this is Robert Dyke.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said. “But wasn’t he—?”

“That’s correct. Like your uncle, he was also on the Capella . He’s maybe the one person in the Confederacy who could work all this stuff out.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Well, you said the right word, Chase. We’re going to run an experiment.”

“Good. I hope you guys will keep us informed.”

“We can do better than that,” said Shara. “You and Alex have been a big part of this since the beginning. You can come along if you like. We’re going to put a yacht into the warp, hopefully get it tangled, then see if we can unwrap it. Stabilize it.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And we have an invitation? When?”

“We’ll be getting set up tomorrow,” said JoAnn. “So figure we leave the day after.”

Shara smiled uncomfortably. “Sorry about the short notice, Chase. But we just got clearance, and time is a priority.”

I called Alex that night and told him about the Capella . “That’s good news,” he said. “I hope they can make something happen. Suttner has a pretty good reputation.”

“She seemed kind of young for a genius.”

“That’s the way it usually goes with physicists, Chase. Make your mark before you hit thirty, or you’re out of the game.”

“They’re running a test of some sort in a couple of days,” I told him, “and they’ve invited us to go along.”

“In a couple of days? No way I can make that. But you’re going, right?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Everything in shape at the office?”

“Yes, Alex. Everything’s quiet.”

“What kind of test?”

“I don’t really have details. They want to find out whether they can tinker with the drive and stabilize the thing.”

“Okay. But be careful. Don’t volunteer for anything.”

“Relax, Alex. Everything will be fine.”

“I’ll see you when you get back.”

“There’s something else,” I said. “We might have found a Corbett transmitter.”

“A what?”

“A Corbett transmitter.”

“Would you want to brief me on what that is?”

That was an enjoyable moment. It’s not often I come in ahead of the boss on an archeological find. “It’s a twenty-sixth-century hypercomm transmitter. This was the breakthrough unit.”

“You mean for FTL transmissions?”

“Yes.” What else could I mean?

“Really? You sure?”

“According to the Brandenheim.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“That’s the really interesting part of the story. Marissa Earl showed it to me.”

“Marissa?” He grinned. “It has something to do with Garnett Baylee?”

“That’s correct.”

“I wasn’t entirely serious, Chase. Baylee? Really?” He scratched his temple. “He’s been dead about nine years.”

“Eleven, in fact. They found it in one of the closets in his house.”

“Nobody knew he had it?”

“Right. His family still lives there, and they came across it by accident. I have a picture of it if you want to take a look.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

I love watching his eyes light up. “Chase, did you say whether the museum’s made an offer?”

“No, Alex. I don’t know about that. I didn’t really want to ask.”

He shook his head. Not surprised. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Our clients shouldn’t have any problem beating whatever the Brandenheim would be willing to pay. The whole story amazes me, though. Not much of that Golden Age stuff has survived. People have been looking for it for thousands of years. Baylee spent a substantial amount of his life searching for artifacts from that period.” He was frowning. “I met Baylee a couple of times. He was a nice guy, but he wanted to be the premier archeologist on the planet. I can’t imagine he’d have come up with something like this and stuck it in his closet and forgotten about it. I wonder if he was possibly suffering from delusional problems?”

“I don’t know. Marissa didn’t say anything to suggest that.” For a moment, we stared at each other. Alex was in a time zone three hours later than I was. He looked tired, and it was obvious he was ready to crash for the night. “So,” I asked, “do you want me to do anything about this? Should I make an offer? Just to make sure she doesn’t let it get away?” Normally, we restrict ourselves to playing middleman in these arrangements. But for something like this—

“It’s too early. We don’t want to look anxious. Call Marissa tomorrow, though, and tell her not to do anything without checking with us first. Tell Jacob that if she tries to call me, he should put it through.”

“Okay. But I should probably mention that she didn’t seem to be consulting us about a sale.”

“Really? What do you think she wanted?”

“I think she just wanted to get a sense how much it was worth. And maybe talk with somebody who might have an idea why her grandfather would forget he had something like this.”

“I can’t imagine why she’d expect us to know.”

“You’ve a reputation, Alex. But anyhow, if you prefer, I can call and tell her we can’t be of any assistance.”

He laughed. “Ask her to make the transmitter available to us so we can run some tests. Let’s just be sure this is what it seems to be.”

The following morning, I called Marissa and relayed Alex’s wishes. She told me that she wasn’t planning on taking any action for the moment and would wait until we’d had a chance to examine the transmitter. Then, while I was having breakfast, an announcement came over the HV that Ryan Davis, the president of the Confederacy, would be making a statement at the top of the hour. The president was visiting Cormoral, and there was, of course, no way he could speak to us directly from a distance of forty light-years. That meant the message had already been received, and they were trying to expand their audience.