Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

We were still in mountain country when the service bot brought lunch. And wine. Alex gazed moodily through the window at the passing landscape.

I thought about Maddy while I ate. I liked her, identified with her, and I hated to think she’d been part of a conspiracy to put Dunninger out of action.

“First thing we need to do,” I told Alex, “is to go back and look at the shipping schedules again. We’d assumed that any black ship would have to go all the way out to Delta Kay. But this changes things. We need to check, to see whether anyone was in a position to get close enough to manage a rendezvous.”

“I’ve already looked,” he said. “It was one of the first things I did.”

“So you’re telling me nobody would have been able to do that either?”

“That’s correct. Nobody was unaccounted for. Nobody, other than the Peronovski, was anywhere near the target space. And not for weeks afterward.

Which means Maddy didn’t immediately go back to pick them up. But that’s just smart planning.”

He finished his meal and pushed it aside.

“You know,” I said, “I think I prefer the alien juggernaut theory.”

“Yeah. I feel that way, too.”

“I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What was the last-minute emergency that kept Taliaferro off the flight?”

“Chase, I don’t think Taliaferro ever intended to go. I think everybody on board that ship was part of the conspiracy to shut down Dunninger. Taliaferro got volunteers, people who were willing to give up their everyday lives to stop something they thought would be a major calamity. But there was a limited number he dared ask.

Not enough to fill the ship. Taliaferro couldn’t go himself, because they needed him to direct things from Survey. They were going to need money, for example, and eventually a base. So Taliaferro set up Morton College. But there were a lot of people who wanted to make the Polaris flight, so they had to be able to claim it was filled.”

We passed through a small town, lots of lights, someone on a runabout.

Otherwise, the streets were empty.

The train ride required a bit more than fourteen hours. We slept most of the way and got into Limoges an hour or two before midnight. Once off the train, we hurried through the terminal like a couple of fugitives, watching everybody and wondering when someone would throw a bomb. But we got back to the town house without incident.

Neither of us was ready to call it a night. Alex poured two glasses of Vintage 17, made a sandwich, and sat down in an armchair in a manner that suggested big things were about to happen.

I’ve forgotten the AI’s name at the town house, but he directed it to provide a display with Delta Karpis at the center. “Make a sphere around it, with a sixty-lightyear radius.” Sixty light-years, of course, was the maximum range the Polaris could have traveled in the three days it had available. “How many habitable worlds are there?”

“One moment, please.”

Alex was in excellent spirits. He looked across at me and grinned. “We’ve got them,” he said. His sandwich showed up, and he picked it up without looking at it, took a bite, chewed and swallowed, and washed it down with his wine.

I was feeling less jovial. Alex says I worry too much. “I hate to point this out,” I told him, “but I think we’ve done enough. Why don’t we walk away from this? Give everything to Fenn and let him deal with it? Before more bad things happen?”

He shook his head. It’s a hard life when one is surrounded by such imbecility.

“Chase,” he said, “don’t you think I’d love to? But they’re going to keep coming after us. And there’s no way we can stop that until we stop them. Fenn’s not going to run out to Delta Kay and look around.” His voice softened. “Anyhow, don’t you want to be there when we confront these people?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Three,” said the AI. “There are three habitable worlds.”

“Three? Is that all?”

“It’s a sterile area. Most of the stars in the region are young.”

“Delta Karpis wasn’t young.”

“Delta Karpis was an exception. And there is also an outstation.”

“Where?”

“Meriwether. It’s actually a bit farther than the parameters you set. It’s sixtyseven light-years out.”

“Where is it? Show me.”

A swirl of stars appeared in the middle of the room. A prominent yellow one began blinking. “Delta Kay,” said the AI. An arrow appeared above a side table, pointing toward the back porch. “That way to Indigo.” Then we got another blinker, this one red, over a love seat. “The Meriwether outstation.”

Alex looked pleased. Only four possibilities. “Chase,” he said, “we’ve caught a break.” And, to the AI: “Tell me about them.”

“The worlds first. Terranova has a small settlement.” Its image formed in the middle of the room. “It’s the home of the Mangles.”

“What’s a Mangle?” I asked.

“They’re a back-to-nature group who like isolation. They ascribe, more or less, to the philosophy of Rikard Mangle, who thought that people should get their hands dirty, build their own homes, and grow their own food. To do less, he maintained, is to fall short of knowing what it truly means to be human. Or something like that.

Aside from an occasional hermit, they’ve been the sole inhabitants on Terranova for two centuries. They claim to be the most remote human outpost.”

“Are they?” I asked.

“Depends where you put the center of the Confederacy, ma’am.”

“And they’re still functioning?” said Alex.

“Oh, yes. They’re still there. But they don’t have much contact with the outside world. A little trading. And every once in a while somebody escapes.”

“That’s a gag, right?” I said.

“Not at all. Their children don’t always want to stay. Some, when they can, clear out.”

“The brighter ones.”

“I’m not equipped to make that judgment.”

Alex wore a wry smile. “These Mangles,” he said, “would they be likely to let an outside group move in?”

“Judging by their history, as well as their code of regulations, I’d say not.

Unless you adopted their political philosophy.”

Well, I thought, that part of it doesn’t matter. A planet’s a big place. The Polaris had a lander. The Mangles sound fairly primitive, so the lander could have gotten to the surface unseen easily enough. “How many Mangles are there?”

“Fewer than sixty thousand, Chase. Terranova is the only Confederate world that shows a consistent decrease in population.”

“Okay,” said Alex. “Tell us about the other two.”

“Markop III. And Serendipity. Neither has been settled. Gravity approximates one point four at Markop. It’s uncomfortable under the best of circumstances.

Serendipity’s air is thin, and the surface is hot to intolerable. Any human settlements would have to be placed near the poles.”

“But the air is breathable.”

“Oh, yes. It’s not a place you’d want to go if you like comfort. But you could certainly put a group of people there and, assuming you provided food and shelter, you could have every hope they’d survive.”

“What about the outstation? Meriwether?”

“It services a bare handful of missions each year. It’s probably the oldest of the operational stations. Completely automated.”

“Could I use it without leaving a record?”