Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

“Sorry to hear about it,” I said.

“A half century ago. He never got over it.”

However that might have been, I had the pleasure of watching him light up when he received the bracelet.

He called us as soon as the box arrived, and he unwrapped it in our presence.

Until that moment he didn’t know precisely what he’d gotten. (He’d shushed me when I tried to tell him what we were sending.) But his eyes went wide when he saw gold. And wider still when he saw the engraved name on the bracelet.

Nancy.

By that time, we were getting calls from all our clients, almost everyone on the list. Everybody was interested in the Polaris. They’d all heard we’d salvaged some artifacts. Was there perhaps a piece available?

Terribly sorry, we told them. Wish we could oblige.

I was glad we kept the jacket and the long-stemmed glass. Alex told me he’d intended to get something for me, too, and if I liked the glass, he’d be willing to part with it. But I could read the nonverbals. He wanted me to decline. I’d have loved to have it at home in my den. But better, I thought, was to have the boss feeling indebted to me. So I told him it was okay, keep it, think nothing of it. I’d see it every day anyhow. He nodded, as if he were doing me a favor by retaining it.

The ship’s registry number, CSS 117, had been retired ten years after the incident. No future vessel would ever be so designated. Nor, I suspected, would there be another Polaris. The people who name superluminals aren’t superstitious. But why tempt fate?

Alex bought a lighted display case for the jacket, which went into a corner of the office, near a cabinet and away from the imager. I folded and refolded it until it looked the way it should, with Maddy’s name (which was sewn over the left-hand breast pocket) visible. We closed and locked the case, and stood for a minute or two admiring our new possession.

But where to put the glass? We needed a place where it couldn’t be knocked over and wouldn’t get dusty. And where there’d be at least a degree of security.

Bookshelves were built into two of the walls. There was also a Stratemeyer antique bookcase, a half century old, that Alex had inherited from his uncle. It had glass doors and could be locked. “Yes,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

Not exactly. We had to move it out of range of the imager, so we found ourselves rearranging most of the furniture in the office. But when we were done, it looked good.

Alex stood back to admire the arrangement, opened the bookcase doors, made room on the top shelf, and handed the glass to me to do the honors.

Later that afternoon I got a call from Ida. “Check the news on sixteen, Chase,” she said. “There’s a weird piece about the Polaris. ”

I asked Jacob to take a look, and moments later a man and woman materialized in the office. The woman was Paley McGuire, who was one of CBY’s reporters. They were standing beside five packing crates on the dock at Skydeck. A ship’s hull protruded into the picture, its cargo doors open.

“-In orbit around the sun, Mr. Everson?” Paley was asking.

“That’s correct, Paley. It seemed the appropriate way to handle this.” The crates stood higher than he did. But they were, of course, in low gravity. Somebody picked one up and carried it through the cargo doors.

“But what’s the point?” she asked.

Everson was about twenty-five. If you could overlook his age, he had a scholarly appearance, reinforced by a black beard. He was conservatively dressed. Gray eyes, a deportment that suggested maturity beyond his years, and the long thin hands of a pianist. “In a sense,” he said, “these objects are almost sacred. They should be treated with respect. That’s what we’re doing.”

“Jacob,” I said, “what’s in the boxes? Do you know?”

“One minute, ma’am, and I’ll review the program.”

Paley watched another one get hauled away. “How far out will you be going before you jettison them?”

“One doesn’t jettison this kind of cargo,” he said. “One releases it. We’ll lay it to rest.”

“Chase,” said Jacob, “the crates contain the debris from the bombing at Survey.”

“You mean the artifacts?”

“Yes. What is left of them.”

“So how far,” asked Paley, “will you go before you release them?”

“Just to the moon. We’re going to leave Skydeck when it lines up with the sun.

When the moon lines up with the sun, that is. That’ll happen tonight. About 0300 up here. We’ll still be on this side of the moon when we let everything go.”

“Mr. Everson, I understand the containers will be going into a solar orbit.”

“Not the containers. We’re keeping the containers. Only the ashes will be released-”

“Ashes?”

“We thought it appropriate to reduce everything to ashes. But yes, they’ll be in solar orbit. Their average distance from the sun will be eleven point one million kilometers, which is one percent of the distance they were from Delta Kay when they were last heard from.”

McGuire turned and looked directly at Chase. “So there you have it, folks. A final farewell to the seven heroes of the Polaris. Sixty years later.”

I called Alex in. Jacob patched on the beginning, which consisted of no new information, and ran the program again. “You ever hear of this guy?” I asked, when it was finished.

“Never. Jacob, what do you have on Everson?”

“Not much, Alex. He’s independently wealthy. Born on Toxicon. Has been on Rimway six years. Owns an estate in East Komron. He runs a school of some sort up there. Morton College. It’s a postgrad school for high-IQ types. Not married. No known children. Plays competitive chess. Apparently quite good. And he’s on the board of directors of the Polaris Society.”

“The Polaris Society? What’s that?”

“It’s a group of enthusiasts. Branches around the world. They stage a convention in Andiquar every year. It’s traditionally on the weekend after the date that the Polaris was scheduled to arrive home.”

“Which is-?”

“This weekend, as it happens.”

I asked Alex offhandedly whether he’d be interested in going. It was intended as a joke, but he took me seriously. “They’re all crazy people,” he said.

Actually, it sounded interesting, and I said so. “They have panels, entertainment, and it might be a chance to meet some new clients.”

He made a face. “I can’t imagine any of our clients showing up at something like that. But you go ahead. Have a big time.”

Why not? I went to the Society’s data bank and read about them. It didn’t take long before I decided Alex was right; they were fanatics. The descriptions of the convention made the point: They read pseudoscholarly articles to each other; they played games based on the Polaris; they debated the finer points of the incident, whether the onboard lander had been disabled (some swore this had been the case); whether the AI had been a late substitution for the original system; whether the Nancy White who got on board was not the real Nancy White but an evil twin of some sort, and the real one had been living all these years in New York.

They were meeting for three days at the Golden Ring, a midlevel hotel downtown. I showed up the first evening, just as they were getting started.

The Golden Ring is located in the park district. Beautiful area, a patch of forest filled with streams, cobbled walkways, fountains, granby trees, and statuary. It was cold, and the fountains had been turned off. A brisk wind was blowing out of the north.

I went into the lobby, paid my admission fee, got a badge with my name on it, collected a program schedule, and took the elevator up.

Several meeting rooms had been set aside on the second and third floors, and events seemed to be running simultaneously in all of them. I stopped at the bar, picked up a drink, and looked around to see if I recognized anyone. Or, maybe closer to the truth, if there was anyone who might recognize me. Walking into a convention of this sort is a bit like showing up at a meeting of astrology buffs or the Gate Keepers (which, if you haven’t been paying attention, claim to have the truth about the next world), or that reincarnation group, Onward. But I was surrounded by strangers, so I figuratively pulled up my collar, and stopped outside an open door that said ALIEN WIND PANEL . There weren’t more than about fifteen people in the audience, maybe a quarter of the room’s capacity. But it was early yet; people were still coming in. “The alien wind,” one of the panel members was saying, “was more like a gale. It blew through the ship. It was able to do so because it consisted of anti-particles. They don’t interact with regular particles; therefore, the hull doesn’t present a barrier.” The speaker was well along in years, dignified, the kind of guy you might have mistaken for a physician, almost persuasive. But I knew just enough science to know he was talking nonsense.