Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

“What now?” growled Charlie as they waited at the luggage pickup counter. The launch vehicle was just barely visible through a window on the other side of the concourse. It was still rising into the sky, its lights fading quickly amid dark clouds. “Back to the South Pacific?”

“How about season passes for next year? Boxes?”

“Yeah. Good.” He pushed Jake. “You know, say what you like, interstellars are bunk. You got to go for the things that really matter.”

“We’ve lost the Coraggio .” Calkin’s voice was frantic. “The damned thing’s gone, Morris.”

When the call came in, Morris had been assisting at a simulated program for a lunar reclamation group, answering phones for eleven executives, preparing press releases on the Claymont and Demetrius projects, opening doors and turning on lights for a local high-school tour group, maintaining a cool air flow on what had turned into a surprisingly warm March afternoon, and playing chess with Herman Mills over in Archives. It had been, in other words, a routine day. Until the Director got on the line.

Denny Calkin is a small, narrow man, in every sense of the word. And he has a big voice. He was a political appointment at NASA, and consequently was in over his head. He thought well of himself, of course, and believed he had the answers to everything. On this occasion, though, he verged on hysteria. “Morris, did you hear what I said?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ve lost the Coraggio .”

“How’s that again, Denny? What do you mean, lost the Coraggio ?”

“What do you think I mean? Lucy isn’t talking to us anymore. We haven’t a clue where she is or what’s going on out there.”

Morris’s face went absolutely white. “That’s not possible. What are you telling me, Denny?”

“The Eagle Project just went over the cliff, damn it.”

“You have any idea what might be wrong?”

“No. She’s completely shut down.” He said it as if he were talking to a six-year-old.

“Okay.” Morris tried to assume a calm demeanor. “How long ago?”

“It’s been about five hours. She missed her report and we’ve been trying to raise her since.”

“All right.”

“We’re trying to keep it quiet. But we won’t be able to do that much longer.”

The Coraggio , with its fusion drive and array of breakthrough technology, had arrived in the Kuiper Belt two days earlier and at 3:17 a.m. Eastern Time had reported sighting its objective, the plutoid Minetka. It had been the conclusion of a 4.7 billion-mile flight.

Morris was always unfailingly optimistic. It was a quality he needed during these days of increasingly tight budgets. “It’s probably just a transmission problem, Denny.”

“I hope so! But I doubt it.”

“So what are we doing?”

“Right now, we’re stalling for time. And hoping Lucy comes back up.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“That’s why I’m calling you. Look, we don’t want to be the people who lost a twenty-billion-dollar vehicle. If she doesn’t respond, we’re going to have to go out after her.”

“Is the Excelsior ready?”

“We’re working on it.”

“So what do you need from me, Denny?”

He hesitated. “Baker just resigned.”

“Oh. Already?”

“Well, he’s going to be resigning.”

Over in the museum, one of the high school students asked a question about the Apollo flights, what it felt like to be in a place where there was no gravity. The teacher directed it to Morris, and he answered as best he could, saying that it was a little like being in water, that you just sort of floated around, but that you got used to it very quickly. Meantime he made a rook move against Herman, pinning a knight. Then he said what he was thinking. “I’m sorry to hear it.” It was an accusation.

“Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, Morris. Maybe we’ll get a break and they’ll come back up.”

“But nobody expects it to happen.”

“No.” There was a sucking sound: Calkin chewing on his lower lip.

“It leaves us without an operations chief.”

“That’s why—.”

“—You need me.”

“Yes, Morris, it’s why we need you. I want you to come to the Cape posthaste and take over.”

“Do you have any idea at all what the problem might be?”

“Nothing.”

“So you’re just going to send the Excelsior out and hope for the best.”

“What do you suggest?”

“In all probability, you’ve had a breakdown in the comm system. Or it’s the AI.”

“That’s my guess.”

“You’ve checked the comm system in the Excelsior ?”

“Not yet. They’re looking at it now.”

“Good. What about the AI?”

“We’re going to run some tests on Jeri, too. Don’t worry about it, Morris, okay? You just get down here and launch this thing.”

“Denny, Jeri and Lucy are both Bantam level-3 systems.”

“So what are you saying, Morris? That’s the best there is. You know that.”

“I also know they’re untested.”

“That’s not true. We ran multiple simulations—”

“That’s not the same as onboard operations.”

“Morris, there’s no point doing all those tests again. We’d get the same results. There’s nothing wrong with the Bantams.”

“Okay, Denny. But we’ve got a battle-tested system already. We know it works. Why not use it?”

“Because we’ve spent too much money on the Bantams, damn it.”

“Denny, Sara’s done all the test flights with the Coraggio . If we use her, it removes one potential source of trouble from the equation.”

He liked the sound of that, he’d have smiled if he could, while he finished a press release for an upcoming welcome-back event for several cosmonauts and astronauts. He felt sorry for them. They’d been on active duty for an average of nineteen years, and none of them had ever gotten beyond the space station. Calkin responded just as he was sending the document to the public information office. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

He hung up, and it was a long minute before Morris put the phone down. He’d been an astronaut himself, more years ago than he wanted to remember. Now he sat staring out the window. And finally he took a deep breath: “Sara?”

“I heard, Morris.”

“What do you think?”

“The most vulnerable piece of equipment on the ship is the AI.”

“You wouldn’t really mind that, would you? If the Bantams are screwed up some way. “

“That’s not true, Morris. I’m just answering your question.”

“And you’d love to go to the rescue, right?”

“As opposed to what? Opening the mail in the Admin Building? Sure.”

“Yeah. It would be nice. But don’t get your hopes up, kid.”

The Bantam Level-3 was billed as the most advanced AI on the planet. I’m a Level-2, and I’m a Telstar product, purchased during a previous period of austerity.

The Bantams, Lucy and Jeri, were easy to get along with, and did not adopt a superior attitude. It would in fact have surprised me had they done so. They were simply too smart to behave like that. Sure, I was moderately jealous of the attention they received, and maybe of their abilities. How could I not be? Still, I kept it under control, and we’d become friends despite having only limited time together. It’s what civilized entities do. When they arrived I was conducting training simulations at the Kennedy Space Center. A few days later, suddenly redundant, I was shipped to Huntsville.