Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

“Probably my hair. I’ve cut it back a bit.”

“I see that. But there’s something else. You look more serious. Or something.”

Older, I thought.

Suddenly, his image began to fade. It came back, then went away again. Completely.

On the main screen, I could see the crew hurrying, trying to move what would be the last two packages across to the Capella , which was also becoming less distinct. Two of them wore the Randall ’s green uniforms. They were going to get caught over there.

Someone on the Randall was screaming for them to come back. The lifeboats were the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth. The green uniforms kept going, and as the cruise ship faded from view, they went with it.

“Good-bye, Gabe,” I said.

Alex was relieved to hear that I’d seen Gabe. “I wish I’d been with you,” he said.

And with five years to wait, we took a few days off to feel sorry for ourselves and for the Capella families. I told Alex I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing trying to tell Robert Dyke not to monkey with the engines. And Shara told me that John Kraus had admitted to her that he now believed he’d made a mistake. Watching members of the families in tears on the various talk shows left us all with a sense that maybe, sometimes, when the odds are right, you take the chance. “It’s what life is,” said Alex.

Too late now.

We settled back into our normal routine. I started by running searches on Madeleine O’Rourke and Heli Tokata. Neither turned up anything although that came as no surprise. You don’t show up on someone else’s internet unless you’re a major figure of some sort. Alex said he’d send the picture to Les Fremont and Luciana Moretti and run the names past them. “I should have done that when we were still Earthside,” he said. “Getting careless, I guess.”

Meantime, the Transportation Department threw an appreciation ceremony for pilots and crews, attended by about half the people involved, the rest having probably returned to their home worlds. Eight of the Mutes attended. Awards for service beyond the call were granted in absentia to the two Randall crew members who took the last boats over to the Capella , but had not returned.

Alex and I attended, of course. It was one of the gloomier events I’d been to, and the only one recognizing a successful operation that was nevertheless downright melancholy. Alex’s mood blended right in. John sat down with us midway through the evening, and I was surprised to learn that he had intended to present Alex with an award for the discoveries that had led to the formation of the SRF. But when Alex learned of it, he’d declined.

That was out of character for him. I had never known him to shy away from public acclamation. So I asked him why. He just shrugged it off. When I persisted he said he didn’t want to accept an award when two others were being given to people who had jumped into the warp. “We might not get them back,” he said.

He remained unusually somber throughout the evening. As I’ve said, Alex is not exactly a party guy, but he knows how to enjoy himself when occasion demands. But not that night. And, finally, when we had a moment alone, I asked what else was bothering him.

“There was something John said to Captain Schultz—”

“And that was—?”

“That the world had changed. And he was talking about eleven years.”

“I’m not following.”

“Change is a constant, Chase. Which brings us back to Larissa.”

“Again?”

“When I ran my search for Larissa, we found a few unlikely places on the ground. And the Neptunian moon. I never thought about asteroids. They don’t get names. There’s a numbering system.”

“You think they might have had names in Zorbas’s time?”

“Yes. Chase, everything starts out with names . Planets, stars, galaxies, whatever.”

“Have you been able to confirm that about the asteroids?”

“Not yet. I’ve talked with people in several science and history departments. Everybody agrees that it must have been true, but nobody knows for certain.”

“You think that’s where Zorbas put everything? On an asteroid?”

“Where would you find a more secure location at a time when the entire planet was collapsing?”

“Linda Talbott got you thinking this way, didn’t she?”

“That’s a pretty remote place she has. But sure. If I had access to an asteroid and something I wanted to hide—It seems so obvious now I wonder how I didn’t think of it.” In fact, I had, but I let it pass.

“So how do we find it among millions of asteroids? You think there’s a listing somewhere?”

“If there is one that Zorbas used, Baylee must have found it. So, yes, I think there’s a good chance there’s a record, something that will identify the asteroids by name.”

“Where do we look? We’ve already searched the internets here and on Earth for anything named Larissa. Do we start checking internets around the Confederacy? That could take a while.”

“I think there’s a better way.”

“And what’s that?”

“Chase, you work for a company that services collectors. I’d be surprised if we can’t find a book in someone’s collection that wouldn’t provide the answer.”

Hardcover books remain popular items. Nothing shows off one’s intellectual prowess more effectively than a case full of classic novels and histories in a living room where they are visible to all. I sent a message out to everyone we knew who had a collection. That included a considerable majority of our clients. If one is interested in a piece of dinnerware once owned by Margo LaQuerta, we can be certain that her midnight comedies, in two volumes, rests on a shelf nearby.

The message read as follows:

Dear Mr.———:

We are currently conducting a search for any historical or scientific book that might provide a detailed description of Earth’s solar system as it would have been perceived during the Third and Fourth Millennia. Please notify us if you have such a volume and would be willing to let us examine it.

Yours,

Alex Benedict

I showed it to Alex, who suggested I remove his last name. “Keep it informal,” he said. And also he directed me to delete everything in the last sentence after volume , and finish the request with Thank you for your assistance .

We didn’t specify what we were looking for. We knew our clients too well. If a Larissa asteroid did exist, half of them would have somebody out within a few days looking for it.

I sent the message to over a hundred clients and had several replies before I could tell him it was gone.

We handled it by asking each respondent to show us the contents page and the index. We searched the index for asteroid and Larissa and anything else that might be suggestive. Most of them listed Larissa , but were referring to the Neptunian moon. Over the first few days, that was all we saw.

The media, meantime, were filled for days with stories about the rescue effort, interviews with everyone involved, and reports of parties thrown by the families who had gotten someone back, and even by a few who were simply grateful for the confirmation that everyone on the Capella was actually alive. Politicians made speeches and promises. A few people criticized John for not doing everything he could to have Robert Dyke pull the trigger.