Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

“Just see what’s out there.”

“Yes. There were six of them on board, not including the captain. Like the Polaris. They’d been out five months and had stretched their supplies until they were exhausted.”

“So they stopped here before going on to Indigo,” I said.

“Indigo was closed down at the time, Ms. Kolpath. Undergoing maintenance.

This was all there was.”

“What did you talk about?” I asked. “You and Nancy?”

“Nothing of consequence. She was excited because she had never been off Rimway before, and her first flight had taken her so far.”

“And she came back to see you years later. Why do you think she did that?”

“Actually we maintained contact during the intervening years, and in fact right up until the time she boarded the Polaris. ”

“Really? She sent messages from Rimway?”

“Oh, yes. Not often. But occasionally. We stayed in touch.” The avatar looked from Alex to me. He seemed lonely.

“May I ask what you talked about?”

“What she was doing with her life. Projects she was involved in. There were practical advantages for her. When her career as a popularizer of science began to take off, I served as a symbol for some of her presentations.”

“A symbol?”

“Yes. Sometimes she used me to represent an advanced life-form. Sometimes a competitor. Sometimes an indispensable friend. I served quite well. Would you care to watch one of the shows?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you could make a copy available.”

“We have several selections in the gift shop,” he said. “Priced quite reasonably.”

It occurred to me that one of the books, Quantum Time, was dedicated to a Meriwether Pinchot. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” There was no missing the note of pride in his voice.

“Captain,” Alex said, “the Polaris passed close to this station during the final flight. She must have thought of you.”

The avatar nodded. “Yes. In fact, I had two messages from her.”

“I don’t suppose either of them shed light on what happened?”

“Unfortunately not. The last time I heard from her was shortly after the event they went to observe. After the neutron star hit Delta Kay. She described it to me.

Told me it was ‘compelling.’ That’s the word she used. Compelling. I would have thought witnessing the destruction of a sun called for a stronger reaction, but she was never much on hyperbole.” He looked momentarily wistful. “That was a good many hours before Madeleine English sent that last message.”

“What else did she have to say?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. On the way out she’d told me how anxious she was to see the collision. To see the neutron star actually destroy Delta Karpis. She said she wished I could be there with her.”

Alex looked at me. He was finished. “Captain,” I said, “thank you.”

“It is my pleasure. I don’t often get to sit down with guests. People come so seldom, and they don’t have time to talk. Fill the tanks, recharge the generators, thank you and good-bye.”

“Well, Captain,” I said. “I want you to know I’m pleased to have met you, and to have had a chance to spend a little time with you.”

“Thank you, Ms. Kolpath.” He beamed. Even the uniform got brighter.

It was good to be out of the Belle-Marie for a bit, and we decided to spend the night.

There was a suite of rooms in an area the AI referred to as the Gallery. He showed us to them, chattering the whole way. “I have a wide choice of entertainment, if you like.

Drama, athletic events, wild parties. Whatever you prefer. Or, we can simply sit and talk.”

“Thanks, Captain,” I said.

“The parties sound intriguing,” said Alex.

“You may design whatever guests you wish. We also have an inventory of historic figures, if you’d like to participate in some stimulating conversations.”

Tea with Julius Caesar.

“The keys for your rooms are at the doors. Please be sure you return them before you leave.”

The keys were remotes. Alex reached into a pocket, produced the one we’d found at Evergreen, and compared them. They didn’t look much alike.

I collected mine, aimed it, and pressed the open function. The door folded to one side, revealing a living room. Alex showed the duplicate to the avatar. “Captain,” he said, “sixty years ago, would this key have worked on this station?”

The captain examined it and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Setting and design are quite different.”

I stuck my head into my apartment. Lush curtains, polished furniture, chocolate on the coffee table. A large bed piled high with pillows. Private washroom and tub.

Not bad.

“If you elect to stay five days or more,” said the avatar, “the fifth night is free.”

“It’s tempting,” said Alex, not meaning it. The weight of centuries and the sense of decline pressed on the place. Furthermore, Meriwether felt remote. On Belle, we could be a couple hundred light-years from anybody else, but you didn’t notice it. In the outstation, though, you knew precisely where you were. The nearest person was one hell of a long way off, and you were conscious of every kilometer. Alex saw me grinning. “What?” he said.

“I could use a good party.”

Markop III was hardly worth a visit. But we went anyhow, because Alex insisted on being thorough.

It was an attractive world, lots of blue water, fleecy white clouds, herds of big shaggy creatures that made great targets if you were into hunting. The weather through the temperate zones was almost balmy.

If it was inviting, however, it was also potentially lethal. Unlike the vast majority of living worlds, its viruses and disease germs loved Homo sapiens. So you couldn’t drop a group of people onto the surface and expect to retrieve them unless you took a lot of precautions. That fact certainly ruled out tourist spots, and with them, hotels.

There was no talkative AI this time to tell us whether anything out of the ordinary had happened. Markop III had more land space than Rimway, 180 million square kilometers, much of it concealed by forest and jungle.

There had been a settlement at one time. That was ancient history, in the extreme. Four thousand years ago. The records are sketchy on details, but the Bendi Imperium established a colony there, and it lasted about a century before the plagues began to get ahead of the medical people. They eventually gave up.

We weren’t really equipped to do a major planetary scan. But we went into low orbit and took a long look. We spotted some ruins. A couple of long-dead cities, so thoroughly buried in jungle that no part of them was visible to the naked eye. In remote areas that might once have been farms, we saw walls and foundations.

We spent three days in orbit. There was nothing that looked like a viable shelter.

Association, in the early days of the Confederacy, when survival seemed problematic.) Terranova, the new Earth, was well named. It orbited a nondescript orange star, it had a twenty-one-degree axial tilt, its gravity was a fraction of a percent below standard; it had an oversized airless moon, and there were a pair of continents that, seen from orbit, resembled Africa and the Americas.

The most remarkable aspect of the planet was that terrestrial life-forms integrated easily with the biosystem. Tomatoes grew nicely. Cats chased the local equivalent of squirrels, and the temperate zones proved to be healthful places for human beings.

But the critical piece of information for us was that the Mangles had a system of satellites in place, and it had been up and running over a century. Nobody came or went without their knowledge, and it didn’t take long to find out there had been no activity during the target time period. The Polaris had not gone there.